Swan Song
by DeejayMil
Summary: Neither of them realized that their time was finite, not until their world turned to flames and threatened to tear everything apart. For Spencer Reid, the grief was too big; too impossible to believe that four friends were gone. When faced with the opportunity to get back what he'd lost, he needs to decide if it's fate or madness that beckons him.
1. Beginning

_Beginning_

 **Thanks to my beta, Greeneyedconstellations!**

 **.**

 **.**

 _The silver Swan, who, living, had no Note,_

 _when Death approached, unlocked her silent throat._

 **Orlando Gibbons,** ** _The Silver Swan_**

 **.**

In the end, Spencer Reid could tell you down to the day how much time they'd had together.

But no one ever thought to ask, and he didn't realize that time was finite.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

It began when Jason Gideon swept his hand aside with a sanctimonious grin and introduced them to their newest team member.

It began when Aaron Hotchner met the hazel eyes of Spencer Reid for the first time and quietly thought to himself that the man would never last; when Spencer Reid looked up from behind narrow framed glasses and eyed Aaron Hotchner with a distinct feeling that this was a man who would let no one close to him.

They were both right, in a way.

They were also both wrong.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

The first time was just a moment in time, a brush of shoulders and a caught gaze, the slightest promise of something more.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

The second was a late night and one too many drinks, Hotch slipping a companionable arm around his youngest team member to help the swaying profiler from the bar and finding his body pleasurably warm and firm against his side.

At the crossroads they stopped and drew apart, and neither of them told the other what they wanted, or how much.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

The third was Chester Hardwick and Hotch showing his hand, putting himself between Reid and the deranged murderer without a thought.

Reid hadn't had much experience with being cherished, so he didn't think anything of it. After all, Hotch would have done the same for any of his team.

Hotch didn't have much experience with admitting his shortfalls and this, he felt, was one of his greatest.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

The fourth was a cult with Reid on the inside and Hotch outside where he couldn't reach him.

It was listening to Prentiss being beaten over the radio as Rossi trembled with rage and being sickly relieved that it wasn't Reid screaming because he knew he could never hide his heart if that happened.

It was the first moment he considered that maybe he'd somehow started falling in love with a man he'd never even kissed.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

There was a fifth time, because Hotch didn't know how to express his emotions, and Reid wasn't sure if he felt them at all. It felt inexorable, predestined, as though everything in their lives had led to this one moment.

Reid with his cane walking into Hotch's office to find the man running his hand thoughtfully over a framed photo of Jack and leaning in close to examine the picture.

Hotch with uncharacteristic rashness leaning into the distance that yawned between them and pressing his lips awkwardly against the younger man's. He didn't know why he did it and wasn't surprised when Reid skittered back in shock and left without a word.

What he wanted, he wasn't going to get.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

The sixth was a last 'almost' in a life filled with 'almosts', and it was because of Haley.

She was gone and Hotch was alone and broken, and so Reid wasn't surprised when he opened his front door and found the man standing there. Nor was he surprised when Hotch pulled him in and kissed him like he was making up for lost time, a desperation to his movements that betrayed his pain.

He kissed like a man with nothing left to lose.

Reid let him, feeling everything he'd tried to deny for years threatening to overwhelm him, the possibility of having what he'd wanted dancing tentatively at his fingertips. Hotch smelled of whiskey and cologne and loneliness, and something in Reid recognised himself in that scent.

He let him until Hotch's hands fumbled with his belt and he realized that there was a point of no return and they were about to cross it. He'd always been good at denying himself what he desired.

"Stop," he said once, breathless, and then once more in a sharper tone. "Not now. Not like this."

Hotch pulled back with eyes so dark that Reid could feel himself getting lost in them as he stared at him like a stranger. "But you want this."

He did.

But not like this.

"Aaron," he breathed slowly, but he was already gone. The room felt ten degrees colder and emptier than it had ever been.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

The seventh time wasn't an almost, but it was almost an end.

It was Reid's turn to be torn apart by grief, Emily haunting his every waking moment.

He went to Hotch because he needed something to remind him that he was still alive, that they hadn't buried him in the cold grave next to his friend. Hotch didn't turn him away because he couldn't find the words.

There was more than their histories tying them together.

When Spencer shuddered and rocked his hips, feeling Aaron panting under him, there was a timelessness to the moment. It felt as though everything had been somehow leading to this, except now that they'd finally gotten here it was nothing like what they'd imagined.

It was cold and desolate and even though they were together, they'd never been further apart. Emily stood between them like a ghost and in every whimper of Spencer's breath, Aaron could hear the promise that this would end them.

He couldn't look Spencer in the eye because there was a light in them that almost said, _"I love you."_

When he moaned and whispered his lover's name against the warm sheets, there was an unspoken _"I'm sorry,"_ hidden between the words.

 _"She's not dead,"_ hung over them the whole night, in the whiteness of Spencer's skin against the blankets, and the echoing hollowness that was left when the other man slipped out of him. _"She's not dead,"_ spoken in a thousand different ways as Reid dressed quietly, even replacing his tie, a shield against betrayal.

 _"She's not dead,"_ should have been what he said, but instead he stood and pulled him close, ignoring the stiffness of his posture, and breathed in the scent of his hair. "I want this," he admitted, closing his eyes and daring to hope, even though there was nothing he deserved less.

"Stop running then," Reid mumbled, before slipping out of his grasp like a ghost and leaving.

Then Emily came back, shattering everything they'd built from the foundation up, and he couldn't see a future in which it was rebuilt.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

There was a time when Spencer Reid could have counted down to the minute how long they had left, but no one asked him to and so he didn't realize how small that number actually was.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

It was always unknown which minute details would save a life.

There had been cases solved with the title of a song or a leaf from a tree. Small, unimportant things right up until they became everything, made huge in the moment of their proving.

Today it was a moment of thoughtlessness and a broken wrist sustained in training for the real thing.

Two lives saved because of the details.

Spencer Reid had always delighted in the details, but these ones would only ever cause him pain.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

"We're going to assist the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. They've received a tip about a forced prostitution ring here in D.C., and they've requested our help with the raid and with interviewing anyone captured during the operation." Hotch's eyes were serious, and there was a moment when he met Reid's own gaze and they darkened.

There was always a price.

"Will's received the tip personally," JJ mentioned quietly, paging through the file she'd accumulated. "He asked if we could help him."

"And I agreed. Our profiling skills could be what they need to put these men away for good."

Reid glanced over the details of the planned raid and hummed noncommittally, something niggling in the back of his mind. It was a small thought, a bite of mistrust that normally would have him pulling them back, reeling them in. Normally being the days when he could trust those around him, when their every interaction wasn't coloured with the knowledge they'd been managing his perceptions in order to deceive him.

Trust was hard to earn and easily broken.

"Is there a problem, Reid?" Hotch asked him as the team filed out the room. Reid stared at the plan on the board and thought of everything he could say to hurt the man in front of him, a petty impulse that he pushed away quickly.

"No, just lost in my own thoughts," he replied, avoiding Hotch's gaze and the history that threatened to overwhelm him there.

There was a distance between them that hadn't been there before they buried Emily Prentiss. When they walked from the room side by side, neither of them thought to cherish the moment.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

"You're sitting this one out," Rossi teased Prentiss, using his pen to tap the colourful cast on her wrist. She scowled at him, irritated despite the expectedness of the announcement. Reid imagined Morgan would catch the worst of her ire later, the injury having been caused by a botched training session. "We don't want to be worrying about a stray punching bag coming back for revenge on you."

"Ass," she muttered as Rossi gravitated towards a stressed looking JJ. Reid didn't reply, eyeing the door of Hotch's office with a mounting disquiet. She turned to him, attuned as always to the ebb and flow of his moods. "Penny for your thoughts?"

He blinked down at her, thrown. "I don't think you can place a monetary value on my thoughts."

There was a flicker of something around her mouth, a restrained smile. "Isn't that exactly what they did when they hired you?"

He thought of Aaron in his arms and the pained gasp he'd made when they'd finally given into each other, a trust that they were finding impossible to retain outside of the bedroom. "They hired me for my smile as well," he told her seriously, face deadpan.

He couldn't be mad at her. He'd lost her once.

She choked back a startled laugh and he left her standing there with the ghost of a grin on his own face.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

It was a mistake, Reid knew that the moment he opened his mouth, but that didn't stop him from disagreeing with his boss in front of the rest of their team, the gathered police and the SWAT team.

It wasn't the first time he'd ever tried to overrule Hotch, and he doubted it would be the last, but as soon as he'd seen the warehouse complex they were to raid he knew it was _wrong._

"We'll talk in private, Dr Reid," Hotch said tersely, trying to draw him to the side, but Reid could see his refusal in the line of his mouth and the distrust that was destroying them in the set of his shoulders.

"No, the blueprints are wrong, Hotch. Look at that building – it doesn't match the data we've been given. I have an eidetic memory, you know to trust me on this."

Morgan was eyeing the building and his face was thoughtful, calculating. Rossi was looking from the ring of unfamiliar faces around him to their team leader's face, his own expression inscrutable. "I don't see any difference," he said slowly. "But I'd trust Reid's calculations over mine any day."

"We can pull back," Will said, standing between JJ and his partner with an unsettled air. "It's all very neat. These things are never this neat, not in this line of work."

Hotch hesitated and there was a single long moment where Reid could see him fighting with his loyalty to his team and his sense of duty.

Duty won. "No. There are women in there who need our help, and if we lose them now there might not be another chance." His eyes met Reid's, and there was almost an apology there. "I need you at my back."

"This is wrong," Reid restated mulishly, tossing a lock of hair out of his eyes nervously and rocking back on his heels. His hands twitched against his sides, trembling with frantic energy, and he knew they could all read the signs of his unrest as easily as they could the FBI acronym emblazoned across his chest. "You're not listening to me because you think my judgement is compromised; you think I'm still mad about Prentiss."

They needed to be a team right now and he was being anything but.

"Our personal business has no place in the field," Hotch said, quieter, stepping forward so the words were between them. "We don't have a choice, Reid."

"There's always a choice, Aaron."

If he'd thought using his first name would gain him some leverage, some sort of nod to the events of that night, he'd been wrong. Hotch's expression shuttered closed and he stepped away.

"If you can't keep your head straight, stay out here and lead us in," he instructed coldly, tilting his head towards the command centre they'd established, before turning and moving into position without another word.

Reid followed him.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

There was a split second when Hotch rounded a corner and Reid jerked around to face him, gun out and hovering for a frighteningly long moment on Hotch's chest.

His youngest agent's finger stayed steady, never strayed towards the trigger, and he should have felt pleased about that.

Instead he noted the wild, cornered look on the tall man's pale face, and the heavy worry that had settled on his shoulders grow into a crushing force. He'd seen that look before, the tightly-strung fearful countenance, and during a hard entry into a hostile situation it got people killed.

He told himself firmly that he would do this for anyone who looked like they were one misfired shot away from heart failure, and drew up next to Reid.

He could smell the harsh bite of sweat on the other man's skin, and a sharper scent that still haunted his dreams and woke him aching in the middle of the night, alone in his bed. "You need to calm down."

A huff of air from clenched teeth. "I am calm."

He was anything but.

His next words were a betrayal, and he knew they'd be taken as such. He said them anyway. "Your judgement is compromised, I can't have you in here. Take over command, lead us in."

Reid closed his eyes for a moment as though Hotch had slapped him instead of dismissing him, and nodded once, slowly. He didn't argue.

He just went.

Hotch held the memory of his scent in his mind for a long frozen moment, before pushing it aside and turning back to the job at hand. There'd be time for apologies later.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

The breeze blew cool and fresh against his face as he walked out of the building, his boss's (lover's?) stern rebuke burning in the back of his mind and making his neck prickle with uncomfortable heat.

It took him a beat longer than it should to have realize it wasn't his embarrassment that had turned the air hot and dry; he stopped right as the world at his back turned to flames and something punched into his spine and threw him forward into darkness.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

This grief was an overwhelming monstrous thing that couldn't be put aside, too big for any box that he tried to contain it in. It was the thought of two orphaned children. It was Garcia making a quiet, pained noise as though her heart was breaking. It was the empty spaces in their lives that somehow contained all of the air that they breathed. It was JJ's half-doodled butterfly on the side of one of his post-it notes, and Emily's blank stare when she walked into his hospital room and found him sitting there alone.

It was five state funerals and Reid solemnly being asked to fulfil the duties of godfather to a lost, broken child.

It was rocking that child to sleep in his arms in the silent, empty apartment that had never felt so isolated, waiting until he had finally cried himself to sleep before succumbing to the tears that tore him apart as they fell.

It was a world once filled with colour becoming lit solely by shades of grey.

It was losing everything you'd ever gained and having people expect you to move on when all you wanted to do was stop to catch your breath.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

If you had asked Aaron Hotchner how many days until he would see Spencer Reid again, he wouldn't have been able to tell you.

But trapped in a dark world lit only by fading moonlight, he could have told you every regret he carried right down to the last.


	2. Arc 1: The destruction of you

_Arc One: The Destruction of You_

 **Thanks to my beta, Greeneyedconstellations!**

 **.**

 **.**

 _Leaning her breast upon the reedy shore,_

 _thus sang her first and last, and sang no more:_

 **Orlando Gibbons,** ** _The Silver Swan_**

 ** _._**

Twelve days had passed, and Reid still woke up nightly haunted by the snap of flames and the scent of smoke.

Henry slept through the night and every morning told stories of dreams filled with birds.

Reid wished he had that resilience.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

On the first day, Aaron Hotchner woke in a dark room lit only by moonlight, watched by a man with the kind of face Hotch imagined very narrowly walked the edge of madness.

"You're very ordinary," the man said coldly, and his words split Hotch's world in two. He couldn't respond, just clutched at his head and tried to stop the pain that threatened to overwhelm him, his nose thick with the smell of burning.

"Who are you?" Hotch croaked out eventually, feeling the room beginning to narrow and contract towards him.

The man responded simply and later Hotch would wonder if what he said was true.

"God."

He tumbled back into darkness, feeling the ground turn to liquid beneath him and begin to drag him in.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Henry recovered with a quickness that Reid both envied and worried over.

"Can I have this?" he asked one day, face brightening as he held up a colourful book with birds strewn across it. The birds' wings and bright plumage spoke to Reid of a freedom he no longer possessed, grounded by grief and responsibilities. "Please, Uncle Spence?"

Reid bought it for him because it seemed like something JJ would approve of, and they spent the night reciting the names of different birds while Reid pored over the job listings. With every name he mastered, the sorrow seemed to lift from the boy's demeanour, the memory of his parents easing its crushing burden.

Reid wondered if Henry would forget his parents. He made more attempts to bring them up in conversation, decorated his ( _no, their. their apartment now)_ apartment with pictures of them, even though the daily reminder of what they'd lost cut him again and again and kept him bleeding and raw.

They went to a therapist and Henry chattered endlessly about birds. The woman used words like coping mechanisms and fixations and talked to Reid like he was a well-meaning, but slightly stupid guardian.

It was a nice change. It seemed appropriate that the clever Spencer Reid had vanished and been replaced with this stranger sporting a perpetual line of concern on his forehead and the faint odour of loneliness on his skin.

"But how are you coping, sweetie?" Garcia questioned him one day when she came to pick up Henry for a sleepover, after being shown a shaky poster Henry had drawn of all the different birds he now knew. Reid wasn't the only one diminished by the explosion. The colours and accessories Garcia had once sported proudly were gone, toned down to pale creams and whites. She dressed like a mom.

She dressed like someone else.

"Fine," Reid lied.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

On the second morning, the man took them outside.

Hotch opened his eyes with the water lapping at his knees, kneeling in the shallows with no memory of having walked there. The air around them was still. The moon glinted overhead, the faintest touch of dawn on the horizon. He thought of getting up, of staggering away.

He stayed. He didn't think to wonder why.

"I don't recommend leaving the lake," the man said from somewhere behind him. "When the sun comes, you'll regret it if you do."

Hotch turned and found that he wasn't alone. Rossi stared at him with a faintly bemused expression, standing at the man's side with his arms loose. As Hotch watched, he joined him in the water, their arms brushing against each other, skin clammy with cold and sweat, answering some unspoken compulsion.

Hotch intended to ask him what was going on.

But then the sky lit with the sun and it set him alight. Faintly he could hear his friend screaming as well, burning with him.

When it faded, he looked up from a body too small and too broken to be his, and the man sneered down upon him. "I was right. Far too ordinary to believe. Nothing but a trinket to turn his gaze away from what really matters."

Hotch tried to snarl at him, shout something, defend himself, but the noise from his throat wasn't human anymore. The man walked away.

He tried not to look in the reflection of the water because down that route lay madness.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

It took a month for the grief to recede enough that Reid could breathe.

It left behind the shadow of a man and the bitter knowledge that nothing could ever be the same. He woke one morning and quietly thought to himself that if he continued in this manner, they may as well bury him next to the rest of his team. He thought of his gun.

He thought of Henry and it stilled his hand.

Perhaps they would list his date of death as the day of the explosion, because if asked he would point to that as the day his life stopped. The day he lost everything.

Almost everything.

"Mama doesn't like birds," Henry told him in serious fashion one morning, picking at his breakfast. Reid pushed aside the stack of dirty bowls in the sink and rinsed a cup, scrubbing at a mark on it listlessly. He faintly remembered when his home had been clean, but dusting and dishes seemed a faraway concern these days. "But I dream of her and she's surrounded by them."

"Dreams don't mean anything, Henry. The average person has five to seven dreams a night. They're just your brain organizing itself."

Henry sneezed and wiped his nose on his sleeve, frowning. Reid winced and pushed a box of tissues towards him.

When Reid thought of Will now, he always apologised because he couldn't possibly be even half of the man Will had been.

Or a quarter of the father.

"These dreams mean something," Henry said firmly through a mouthful of cereal. "There's a swan too, and he sings because he misses someone. He sounds sad."

"Swans don't sing," Reid replied absently, feeling sorry for the swan nonetheless.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Hotch kept to the lake, because the world seemed simpler out there, floating in the current and letting it take him where it wished. The sun beat down on his back, sparkling on the water surrounding him, and if he focused on the points of light he could almost pretend that this was all there was.

It almost made the world make sense again.

He didn't keep track of how long they'd been there, because he didn't want to know. He wondered if anyone was still looking for them.

When night time came, it brought with it unimaginable pain, and he found himself human with water streaming from sodden clothes once more. He stood and stared at his hands, lost in the shape of them.

Rossi stood on the shoreline, eyes wide with fear and something else, shadowed and guarded. "This is insane," he choked, running shaking hands through hair dishevelled with dirt. When Hotch studied him, he could see the illusion of blue and brown feathers still glimmering on his skin, the quickness of his wings a fading echo around him. "It's like some crazy fucking dream we can't wake up from."

When he looked down at his own feet, it was almost a shock to see pink flesh and not webbed claws. "What do you remember before this?" he asked finally, limping to the shoreline and stepping out of the water, the mud oozing between bare toes.

"The raid. Morgan was next to me. A… an explosion." Dave paused, and Hotch could hear the name left unsaid.

Hotch remembered those things too, as well as a sharp scent that he clung to like a life-jacket.

"Spencer," he murmured.

Rossi looked away and they tried not to count the empty spaces around them.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Two months after it ended and Reid took a teaching position. He needed money for things for Henry, little things like shoes and haircuts that were a part of his daily life now. Things to make this easier on them both, even though the very idea of this being easy seemed impossible.

Emily took pity on him one morning and dragged them both out to a movie, seemingly convinced that somehow the distraction would draw their minds away from the obvious.

"Are you coming back to the BAU?" she asked at the park after the feature, sitting next to him and watching Henry swing slowly on his own as he licked at an ice cream cone half-heartedly.

"No," Reid said eventually, because he didn't belong there anymore. "Garcia is going to help me look after Henry while I teach some classes. We might move. He doesn't really… doesn't really say much."

She took his hand and squeezed it tight, and he could feel her hurting as well. There was a sharp, short call nearby. He turned his head without thinking, looking about for the bird responsible, half intending upon pointing it out to Henry. His new interest in birds was becoming an obsession, their apartment rapidly becoming overwhelmed by posters and books on the subject that Reid happily supplied.

His therapist called it a coping mechanism and said it would fade with time, but Reid wasn't sure if he wanted it to.

A flicker of black and white and a hooked beak and the bird vanished before he could identify it.

Henry fell from the swing and cried, and Reid promptly forget that there even was a bird as he swept over to comfort him.

He forgot a lot of things these days.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Rossi took to wings quicker than Hotch did. Within the week he was swooping rings around Hotch's bigger, more ungainly form. Hotch would crane his neck around and watch the brightly coloured kingfisher plunge in and out the water, living through his joy second-hand. Rossi had always been the best of them for finding the positives in a situation.

Hotch didn't even try to fly because it felt too much like admitting that this had actually happened.

He didn't think of Jack either, because the idea of his son waiting for him to return was too painful. The notion of somehow explaining what had happened… impossible.

And he didn't think of Reid, or JJ and Will, or Morgan, because it was his choice to send them into that warehouse.

If they were dead, it was his choice that had caused that.

During the nights, Hotch became human again but Rossi sometimes didn't. It seemed arbitrary when it happened. On the nights he stayed a kingfisher, Hotch carried him on his shoulder and explored the thin woods around the lake, always cautious of where the moon was and the oncoming dawn. They'd hit a point at the edge of the grounds where the air turned slow and viscous, and they would both back nervously away.

If the man who'd trapped them here could turn men into beasts with just the moon to aid him, they didn't fancy discovering what else he could do. Neither of them seemed to get hungry either, and sleep was more out of habit than need. Rossi cut his hand on a branch once during a short stint as a human, and the cut healed before it even had a chance to stop bleeding.

Perhaps their captor really was what he seemed. He didn't return, so they didn't have the chance to ask.

Sometimes he'd catch a flicker of black and white against the dim green of the trees, but every time he looked closer they were alone.

The first night he'd become human, he'd stripped off the FBI vest he still wore and tucked it under a bush nearby. Over time, his shoes and other oddities joined it. It seemed redundant to continue wearing things like socks when the mud ruined them, and they didn't feel the cold anymore.

When Rossi struck the silky mud in the bottom of the lake one day and emerged glistening with Hotch's sodden FBI credentials gripped tightly in his beak, Hotch didn't even look at them before tucking them under the rest of his things. Rossi might be here with him, but he didn't need the memory of the ones who weren't.

He avoided going there otherwise. He couldn't bear the reminder. He stopped sleeping at night, instead watching the stars and finding nothing he knew in the inky darkness. The constellations he had learnt as a child weren't there anymore; instead the sky was a tapestry of strangeness. But he still didn't sleep because when he slept, he dreamed of slender arms around him and a throaty voice murmuring his name like a faded promise.

As time passed on and nothing changed, it became obvious to him. Their lack of hunger, of sensation.

Maybe this wasn't going mad after all.

Maybe this was just what came after the story ended.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Four months, and Reid was reaching for his coffee when a hand slipped into his view and leaned the cup away. When he turned, a man standing next to him read his name with a shy half-smile tilting his mouth upwards.

"Reid," the man said slowly, as though he was savouring the word. Reid's stomach lurched strangely at the sound of his name said so reverently.

"Spencer," Reid replied, suddenly aware of the stubble he hadn't had time to shave that morning in the rush to get Henry to school and the stain on his crooked tie. He resisted the urge to run his fingers through his hair. "Do you often steal people's coffee to learn their names?"

The man looked at him with eyes, sharp and blue, and they displayed none of the shyness that his face suggested.

Those eyes both repelled and intrigued him in equal measures.

"Only the interesting ones," the man said with his smile turning hungry. "You don't seem ordinary." He took the pen on the counter and scrawled something on the cup, pushing it back towards him. Grinning, he sauntered away as though he hadn't just left Reid's heart hammering in his wake.

A phone number. He became abruptly aware of the line behind him, people muttering, the barista glaring from behind the counter.

He could be reckless, despite his usual caution.

When he finished the drink, he threw the cup away. After all, he'd already memorised the number.

He tried to tell himself he wouldn't call it, but he already knew he would. The scent of Aaron's skin against him was fading, the memory of them together still clear and vivid, but excruciating.

Loneliness was a compelling reason for recklessness.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Aaron Hotchner had never been one to allow himself to be beaten.

However, he'd always shown a frightening proclivity to self-destruction. In the past, he'd always managed to stop the spiral before it turned him into his father, drunk and violent with self-loathing. The people around him had grounded him. Haley and eventually, Jack. Dave. His team. His job.

Here it was just him and Dave and the ever-present knowledge that he may have lost every one of those reasons. Death hovered over him like a shroud.

David Rossi had never been one to allow others to wallow in misery. Even with wings and a beak, that hadn't changed.

One morning he seemed determined that today was the day they'd wake up from this nightmare, diving at Hotch's back in quick bursts and raking his pointed beak over the thick, white feathers. The impact didn't hurt, more of an irritation than anything, but Hotch snapped his own bill at his friend furiously.

Rossi responded by flying in ever-tightening circles around Hotch's slender neck, the barest tips of his wings brushing against his throat as he went. It was an impressive display of aerial skill.

It was infuriating.

Hotch opened his wings, gliding easily on the water after his friend and beating them angrily. His wingbeats were deafening in comparison to Rossi's quick thrumming tempo, echoing across the lake.

When the air beneath his wingspan caught, and he felt himself lifting from the surface with a sudden dull ache in his back muscles, he was shocked enough that he promptly dropped straight back into the water with a splash, flapping gawkily to right himself.

Rossi hung sideways from a branch. He opened his beak widely and laughed as much of a laugh as his bird form could manage.

There was a long moment where the two men stared at each other, one stunned and the other mocking.

Hotch opened his wings slowly and tried again.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Henry stopped suddenly one day on the way to school and stared at a building across the road. Reid tugged at his hand ineffectually, distracted by thoughts of lectures and students and for once blissfully free of the thought of anything else.

"That bird was in my dream," Henry said uncertainly. "He shouldn't be here."

Reid turned to look where Henry's gaze was aimed, scanning the building. The hawk's proud bearing caught his eye and he found himself entranced by the creature's cunning regard. Sleek feathers of black spotted with white stood out vividly against the dirty grey of the building, the bird's chest bared handsomely.

He didn't recognise the species, which was odd because he'd pored just as intently over Henry's book in an effort to do something right, to somehow make up for the child's unbearable loss.

"Dreams don't mean anything," he murmured, more to himself than Henry, but the bird's intent glare made his stomach roil uncomfortably. He felt drawn towards it, almost painfully. "You probably saw it in a book. It's some kind of goshawk. We can look it up after school."

Henry flickered his eyes back from Reid's face to the hawk's, uncertain and just as thrown by the animal as Reid himself was. "Alright," he said eventually, turning to resume their path.

Reid hovered by the road for a moment longer, watching Henry walk away before glancing back at the building opposite.

The empty perch with not even a flicker of white to show where the creature had stood.

He tried not to think of it as an omen. Superstition had no place in his life.

His neck prickled for the rest of the day, as though sharp eyes still watched him.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

It's an odd thing. A grounded bird has no sense of its own brilliance, the power that it holds at its wingtips. A grounded bird is content to let the world slip by it, time irrevocably passing. It is caged as relentlessly as if there are bars enclosing it.

When given flight again, none of this remains. The bird forgets that it was once caged and revels in its freedom.

Aaron found that out firsthand.

Rossi had the world under the lake as his own, his streamlined body easily breaking the smooth surface with barely a ripple and propelling him through the water.

Hotch had the world above, powerful wings lifting him gracefully through the air. It hurt, at first. The strain of flight set his muscles aflame, and that night as a human he would lay on the shore of the lake and flinch every time his back twinged. Rossi hopped on his spine, small weight useless at easing any of the pain, chattering in his fast, high pitched voice.

Within days his muscles adjusted and he found himself free. It was very much like having his former power restored to him.

The world opened up around them.

Sparse woodland in a loose ring around the lake ended abruptly, as though a line had been drawn in the ground. Beyond that, the world seemed hazy and unfocused. At one angle he could see unfamiliar farmlands, rolling and green, but as soon as he tilted his neck the other way it became the roads and buildings of D.C.

Rossi flew up next to him on what Hotch was pretty sure was their thirteenth day, and whistled, dipping down smoothly to point his beak in the direction he wanted them to go. Hotch followed without question.

He wasn't entirely sure if flight was worth giving up their voices.

When the small house came into view below them, hidden from the lake by a copse of trees, Hotch's pulse quickened uncomfortably.

Down there were answers.

Down there was _freedom._

As one, they spiralled slowly down to the building.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Their first proper meeting was awkward. Reid refused to call it a date because that felt like a betrayal, even with Aaron six months cold in the ground.

If asked, Reid could tell you exactly how long since the last time he'd looked at Aaron Hotchner, but he wouldn't because he still hadn't had enough time to come to terms with it.

The man didn't ask anything like that though. He introduced himself as Stephen. Reid tried to think why that name was faintly familiar to him. He asked about Reid's work, his hobbies. Reid turned the conversation to books, found many they shared.

He kept it away from himself, and the man let him.

Their second date was better, but Reid still flinched away when Stephen touched his hand. They had dinner and split the check. Reid found himself talking about birds. Henry's influence. He talked about Henry, too.

His life had quickly become very much about those two things, and it was a struggle to remember a time when it hadn't been. When he was a godfather and nothing more.

Nothing more except a profiler, a friend. A lover, sometimes. Now none of those things.

Their third date, and Stephen walked him out the concert hall and pulled him close, and this time Reid didn't pull away as their lips met. It wasn't a chaste kiss, nor a gentle one. It left him slow with a heady desire that pooled in his groin as a delicious, almost forgotten, heat.

Stephen kissed him like he wanted to become a part of him, tasting him and inscribing that taste to memory. It was almost frightening and it left Reid aching for something he was missing.

"Your son," Stephen began, and Reid didn't correct him, still reeling from the contact. "I keep birds. Would he like to come see them one day?"

And Reid agreed because there could be something better here, for them both.

When they walked away a harsh shriek followed them, and Reid looked up before even registering what he was looking for.

He wasn't surprised when he met the beady eyes of the goshawk, although his nerves twinged uncomfortably. Stephen didn't notice it.

He didn't point it out to him.

Somehow it felt private.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

The man wasn't there, the house empty and still. There was a bizarre atmosphere around it, as though he'd only stepped out a moment ago and yet had also somehow been gone for a long time. Hotch landed clumsily on feet ill designed for walking. It felt as though his perceptions were being dragged in two vastly different directions, leaving him disoriented and stumbling.

Rossi shook his head and shrilled angrily at the feeling, hopping up to the decorative window above the door and pecking at it sharply. The tinkling of breaking glass left them both feeling intently satisfied, as though finally striking back against their captor. The illusion of revenge.

As his friend disappeared inside, Hotch wobbled back and forth in front of the door, hissing in the back of his throat uneasily. The seconds dragged by tediously, every moment of silence one more moment that something could have gone horribly wrong for them.

Hotch was uncomfortably aware that if something did go wrong, he couldn't reach him in time. He eyed the shuttered windows cautiously, pushing away images of torn and bloodied wings battering against broken glass. After all, they seemed to heal effortlessly here.

That didn't stop him from being wary of the idea.

Another window clicked and swung open, Rossi's tiny blue head poking out and whistling cheekily at him. He snorted at his friend's antics and flapped up to the window, falling through in an ungainly tumble of white feathers and sending papers from the desk he landed on scattering.

So much for being sneaky.

An unfamiliar clattering of wings and a harsh caw behind them. Hotch turned to find a raven eyeing them both prudently.

Even as a bird, they both recognised him immediately.

 _Derek,_ Hotch thought with a rush of the sweetest relief imaginable. All at once everything he'd been fighting not to think about over the past few weeks assailed him: Morgan burning in the explosion, JJ reaching for Will and failing to find him in time, Spencer's brilliant mind stilled forever as his body lay twisted beyond recognition.

He staggered and gagged, a horrible noise tearing from a body unsuited to human reactions. The raven hopped a few steps along the perch he was standing on, and the sickness instantly vanished from Hotch's stomach and was replaced with rage as he saw the delicate leather strap attached to his team member's thin leg.

Hissing furiously, he moved forward, craning his neck up to examine the strap. Rossi landed next to the bigger bird, a bright trinket against the glossy black of the raven, and bit at the strap while holding it down with one agile foot. Morgan stood quietly, watching them both with bright eyes, gratitude and shock visible in the hunch of his shoulders and back.

It was oddly easy to release the strap and Hotch wondered why Morgan hadn't done it before with his much deadlier beak.

A question answered when the raven flapped cumbersomely over to the doorway and vanished through, Rossi following. Hotch shuffled after them, finding them both hanging off a gilded cage and peering within.

This time the relief was tempered with apprehension.

JJ and Will. Huddled together in a frightened ball of dusky red and creamy feathers, long forked tails brushing against the floor of their cage. Alone.

No Spencer.

He didn't know if that was a good or bad sign.

It was the work of a moment for the two men to release the intricate catch, freeing the swallows. Will perched on the opening of the cage, his feathers ruffled with barely repressed anger. JJ fluttered down to Hotch, landing delicately on the ridge of his wing and whistling lightly in greeting. He turned his neck back and tapped his bill against hers, taken aback by the vast difference in size between them now.

Will took to the air, broad pointed wings lifting him easily despite his lack of practise, landing on a door handle and tapping the wood with his beak. The meaning behind it was clear. _In here._

Hotch opened the door with his bill, the others watchful. They filed in, forming an odd sort of formation with Hotch at the lead. Almost like everything was back to normal. Like they were human once more, a team just doing their job.

Almost like he could turn around and Reid would be there with his hair falling into his eyes in a cascade, grinning shyly and almost vibrating with his contagious, ever-present pleasure in life. Eternally optimistic.

Hotch sorely missed that optimism right now.

The room lay silent, forgotten. Unlike the rest of the house, there was no feeling of the inhabitant having just stepped out. A thick layer of dust covered everything and someone sneezed, a soft, tinny sound in the still air.

Hotch examined the prints on the walls, birds of all shapes and sizes. Books filling the shelves. A box of grimy film reels.

Photos lining the cupboard.

It was like stepping back in time and by JJ's shocked inhale, she saw it too. Morgan and Will didn't react. He couldn't tell about Rossi, the man stayed mute, his feathers flat and head lowered.

A desk sat in one corner of the room, but whatever had covered it had been swept to the floor, the polished surface marred by long gouges out of the wood forming a spiralling design of symbols. Hotch didn't look at the patterns carved into it, he couldn't. He stood in the doorway and tried to breathe evenly, tried to focus on what he knew instead of the absurdity that beckoned to him.

He couldn't ignore what the room was telling him.

 _Gideon,_ called the photos, smiling inhabitants hidden by neglect.

 _Gideon,_ laughed the film reels, and he knew that if he was to return during the night with hands and play those clips on the rusty projector, he'd find Charlie Chaplin soundlessly repeating the same.

 _Jason Gideon,_ whined the birds on the wall, the shapes they were trapped in, the absence of Reid.

Hotch still wasn't sure if he was ready to believe in magic, but the possibility of betrayal was nothing new to him.

The possibility of this betrayal, however?

It could destroy them.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

"I've been dating," Reid told Emily when she rung to ask about Henry, keeping his voice casual. She sounded stressed, and he could hear a familiar noise in the background. At work.

Her work. Not his. Not Garcia's. Not anymore.

Neither of them were strong enough to face it. Emily… Emily had always compartmentalized better than any of them.

"Oh?" The tired tone vanished, replaced with a cautious sort of relief. "What's he like?"

Reid thought of the man's piercing blue eyes, and the shark smile that slipped onto his face when he thought Reid wasn't looking. He thought about Hotch profiling him _(narcissistic personality, possessive, controlling. dangerous. what are you doing, reid?)_ and what Morgan would think _(you can do so much better. stay the hell away)_ and what Emily would say to him if she were ever to meet him _(fuck off)_ , and he voiced none of these things.

"He's not boring," he said quietly, and thought finally of the goshawk.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

A clap of heavy wings broke the stillness and the smaller birds scattered as something swept through the door and landed on a rugged perch. Hotch backed up and hissed warningly, feeling JJ's small claws cut into his wing to keep her grip as he spread them outward in warning.

The strikingly marked goshawk peered down at him with eyes of endless deep red drawing him in and clicked its beak in return.

 _"Mage is returning. You should get back to the lake,"_ said a clipped, familiar voice in the back of their minds.

Hotch knew that voice. Not a betrayal after all.

A reunion.

 _Gideon,_ he thought once more, shivering with the truth of it.

He tried to imitate the speech, pushing his thoughts towards the goshawk, but received no response. A focused sort of silence fell around him as though the others were trying the same, all of them sparing nervous glances back at the doorway.

Gideon spread his own wings and tilted his head, fixing them with a stare that Hotch had had levelled at him many times over the conference room table or a chessboard. _"I'll help you speak. But you need to get out now. Now!"_

They went and the goshawk followed.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

He dressed Henry sensibly and himself attractively.

He wasn't even entirely sure why anymore, because there was something about Stephen that made every part of his profiler brain scream _run_.

When he dressed, he ran a hand over his hip thoughtfully, and realized he was checking for a gun he hadn't worn in six months. He still didn't cancel because there was an even bigger part of his brain that told him there was something important about tonight.

"Ready to see the birds?" he asked Henry when ready, finding the boy sitting at the kitchen table and drawing intently. He really was getting quite good. Reid looked down at the wonky outline of what was clearly the goshawk and his unease grew.

"Mama wouldn't like me going near birds," Henry replied with a shrug. "But I won't tell her if you won't."

By the time Reid processed that statement, it was already too late to respond to it.

He tucked it away as further proof that JJ had been wrong to trust him with this.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Morgan picked it up first.

 _"Is this right?"_ His voice quiet, and uncharacteristically uncertain, oddly hoarse considering he wasn't using any vocal cords.

 _"Correct,"_ Gideon responded, turning his head and eyeing the raven with a predatory glare. Hotch wondered how long their friend had been here, trapped in the body of a bird. He wondered how much of himself he'd lost to the hawk's fierce demeanour.

He tried not to wonder who had done it to him… or if he'd done it to himself.

He definitely didn't think about how.

 _"This is senseless."_ JJ this time. Her voice a whisper, a tickle in the back of their minds. Rossi chirped in frustration, shaking his head vigorously. _"We have to get out of here. Henry, he must be so worried about us. And Jack, Hotch. What about Jack?"_ She glanced at Will, who looked away.

 _We're going to get out of here_ , Hotch tried to send, but no one responded. He tried again. Failed. Hissed with bitter defeat.

 _"He's here,"_ Gideon sent, glancing down at Hotch and blinking slowly. _"You'll get it eventually, Aaron."_

The eeriness of hearing his name from the goshawk spoken in such a familiar manner would never really fade.

The swallows and raven vanished, melding into the undergrowth. Rossi darted up into the trees, perching lightly on a thin branch and peering down the scraggly path towards the sound of faint footsteps.

Hotch slipped into the water and floated away, keeping close enough to the shore that he could see the man, profile him better, but far enough away that he was out of reach if things went wrong.

He felt almost sick with anticipation, the terror and reluctance at coming face to face with a man of untold power battling with the desire to face their common enemy.

His memories of the man were blurry, hazed with pain and shock, but he had a vague idea of what he expected him to be like.

His expectations were wrong.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Reid stepped out of the thin trees and the first thing he saw was a lake stretching out into the distance, still and calm. It should have been a peaceful sight, tranquil even.

His palms started sweating as soon as he saw it, suddenly absolutely certain that there was something else going on here, feeling like a rat cornered by a hungry cat.

Or a hawk.

Henry wriggled out of his grip, smaller hand slithering from Reid's slippery hold, and darted towards the shoreline.

"A swan!" he yelled back, feet skittering on the smooth pebbles. Reid cringed as mud sprayed up the child's pants. He was never muddy and filthy when JJ and Will were around… "Uncle Spence, look at the swan!"

He looked at the swan, feeling the man step up next to him. The bird stared back, frozen on the glassy surface of the water. Neither of them seemed to breathe for a long moment. He studied it intently, drawn to it. Thick feathers of a brilliant white with wide, dark eyes ringed in black.

He had never actually been this close to one before.

A hand on his arm, gripping tightly. Reid felt fingers digging into his flesh. There'd be bruises there later. "Pretty, but he lacks substance," Stephen remarked, and Reid was stunned by the loathing in his tone. "I can offer you so much more."

The swan reeled back, swinging its long neck around and eyeing them both with what Reid almost fancied was trepidation. There was a startled whistling call from their left, and Henry almost fell into the mud in his excitement. "Kingfisher! Do you think… oh!"

Reid sucked in a sharp breath as the brightly coloured bird dived down and alighted gently on Henry's outstretched hand, its short squeaking voice turning low and affectionate.

"Are they tame?" Reid asked with great interest, stepping forward cautiously and focusing on not slipping in the slick mud. It would be just his luck if he ended up in the water. A quick examination of the great bird's large wings confirmed his suspicion that it could do plenty of damage if it wished. The kingfisher hopped around on Henry's hand, whistling once while peering up at Reid's face, and switching to a darker, angry chittering when it glanced at Stephen.

Stephen pulled him back, skating his hand away from Reid's elbow and sliding it around his waist instead. Reid expected something, some sort of warmth from the gesture, but for some reason he found himself looking again at the swan. The waterfowl looked back, face as impassive as expected, but the feathers on its back bristled as though inexplicably agitated.

"You could say that," Stephen responded with a cool laugh. "They're clingy enough." For some reason, as he talked, he stared straight at the swan challengingly.

"Why is he alone?" Henry said unexpectedly, turning to face them. "He looks lonely… he shouldn't be lonely. They're supposed to mate forever."

A flicker of movement in the corner of Reid's vision and he turned his head to find the goshawk peering down at him, red eyes wary. Misgivings gave way to a firm certainty that there was something here he'd been guided towards. Something important.

Reid wasn't the kind of man to believe in superstition, but he did hold a certain wry acceptance of fate.

He almost missed Stephen's next words, the callousness of them sending a bolt of icy rage straight to his core. "His mate is dead. He'll spend the rest of his life alone, as he deserves."

"But she might come…" Henry's voice wavered, broke. The kingfisher shrilled nervously, tapping his beak against the small hand softly.

"You don't come back from the dead. You should know that, your parents never came back after all."

Reid stiffened and pulled away. The charming mask that the man wore had fallen, and there was a cruelty there that was finally visible for him to see clearly.

Maybe he'd always been able to see it.

Hotch's voice. _"You never told him about JJ and Will. You never corrected him that Henry wasn't your son. Most delusional stalkers have a predisposition toward psychosis."_

Paranoid. He was being paranoid. Stephen hadn't shown behaviours consistent with the profile of a stalker.

He lashed out at Henry. _"Paranoia may make the delusional stalker act aggressively towards a third party."_ Hotch's voice again, as casual as if he was delivering a profile to a room of police officers.

"Is that your goshawk?" Reid asked, hearing Henry's shocked sniffling turn to quiet sobs. The anger vanished, replaced with a nauseatingly calm determination. Even the birds seemed frozen, appalled. "He's not native to America."

A disinterested shrug. "Yeah. It's a useless old relic, but it pleases me to keep it around. A memento, you might call it." He smiled, but it was his shark smile and Reid returned it weakly.

It. Reid wondered how Stephen referred to him.

 _"What makes the delusional stalker more dangerous is their tendency to objectify their victims."_

He made his choice.

He needed to get Henry out of here.

Then he needed to come back.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Spencer. Alive. Human.

And older than Hotch had ever seen him. Hair longer than the short cut he'd sported the day of the explosion, brushing his shoulders again. His skin haggard and taut, as though he'd spent weeks, possibly months, deprived of sleep. And thin… Hotch ached to have arms again, to pull him close and feel for himself the changes in the man's body, the new lines and angles that he could see shifting under the thin shirt he wore.

And Henry. Hotch had seen Henry just weeks before the explosion, holding JJ's hand and grinning with all the tenacity of youth. That Henry wasn't the Henry standing in front of them, taller and wiser than his age should have allowed.

 _"Oh my god,"_ JJ said suddenly, her voice clear even though she wasn't visible to them. _"They're older, Hotch. They're so much older,_ Henry _is older. How long have we been here?"_

 _"Reid's been grieving."_ Morgan's voice now, and it had all of his brashness back, loud and forceful. _"Look at him, he's a wreck. This fucker is in his head, man. He got us out the way and now he's in Reid's head."_

The man's voice, sharp with malice. "You don't come back from the dead. You should know that, your parents never came back after all."

 _"You bastard!"_ snarled Will, his accent strange in Hotch's mind. _"You sick bastard, you stay away from my boy!"_

 _"Don't be seen,"_ Gideon snapped suddenly. _"Unless you want to be caged again."_

Hotch couldn't look away from Reid, seeing the barest shift in his emotions. Not enough. Not as much of a shift as Hotch would have expected, would have wanted.

The Reid that Hotch had held not even two weeks prior would have destroyed the man who dared to speak to his godson like that. This Reid… this Reid stood silent and watched Hotch with cautious, shuttered eyes, barely even seeming to register Henry's distress.

The man oozed closer to Reid and curled around him with a possessiveness that set alarm bells off in all their heads, leaning in close and murmuring something into Reid's ear. Reid stayed still, face as blank as though he'd forgotten to wear an expression, nodded minutely. Took the man's hand.

A return of affection.

Something in Hotch's heart cracked as Reid turned slightly and brushed his lips against the other man's, the barest hint of a smile turning up the corner of his mouth.

 _"What the fuck?"_ Morgan. Voicing all their thoughts.

Rossi swooped off of Henry's hand, taking to the tree again reluctantly. _"Don't jump to conclusions,"_ he responded, his tone calmer than any of them, except perhaps Gideon. _"He's the smartest man I know. No matter what's happened, what he believes happened, he'll work this out."_

As one, Reid and the man turned to walk away, Henry trailing after them and wiping at his face with a grubby sleeve. Reid didn't call out to him, didn't call him closer into a comforting embrace.

Didn't call him closer to the man's reach.

A spark of hope alit in Hotch's chest, fizzling weakly. He spread his wings, intending to fly after him, but something pinned him to the water, stopping his body from leaving it. He fought it for a moment, before subsiding. He felt almost paralysed by the notion that if he lost sight of Reid again, if he left his view, he'd never find him again.

The man clearly didn't want any of them following him. Except Gideon. The goshawk flew after them easily, not sparing the other birds a second glance. Like a faithful hound. Trained in captivity. Hotch wondered again how long Gideon had been a prisoner here, how long they'd failed him.

 _"He believes we're dead,"_ JJ said finally, heavily. _"He's not even looking for us. No one is. You really expect him to work out that we've been turned into birds? In what world is that even possible?"_

Jack. Jack would think himself an orphan.

He almost shattered under that knowledge.

 _"He'll work it out,"_ Rossi said again, resolutely. Stubbornly. _"If there's anyone I'd expect to believe in magic, it's Reid."_

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Stephen showed them his home with his focus locked on Reid the whole time.

Reid had had someone's focus on him this intently once before, but it was Aaron's and it was different. He could feel the hunger in Stephen's eyes, the consuming desire to possess and own.

He managed his perceptions, didn't allow any of his feelings to leak through the carefully constructed facsimile of his face. Stephen didn't notice, or if he did, didn't care.

When they found the gilded cage empty, the shattered glass of a window crunching beneath their feet, the air around them turned heavy and dangerous. It burned in Reid's mouth and left behind the cloying taste of sulphur. Henry said nothing, just pressed closer to Reid's side and trembled.

"Swallows shouldn't be caged," Reid said once, and Stephen's gaze was violent when it snapped back around to stare at him.

Reid glanced through an open door into a dusty room before Stephen pulled him sharply away, and it was a vivid reminder of the past.

He'd seen that room before.

The hawk watched him endlessly and Reid felt madness beckoning.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Gideon reappeared and found them in a huddled group. They turned against him at first. He was one of them once and now no more. They knew that this could end with them on one side and him on the other.

None of them knew which side Reid would be on.

Hotch didn't admit that whatever side Reid took, he'd join. He'd lost him once. He couldn't do it again.

 _"He's my son,"_ Gideon said with finality, his voice spent with a resigned grief. They were shocked into silence. _"The man, he's my son. I did this. My actions, my inactions… I did this."_

 _"Tell us,"_ Hotch said eventually, because no one else seemed capable.

He did.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

There's a saying among law enforcement officers that they have two families.

The ones at home, the sisters and brothers, parents and grandparents, spouses and children. The ones they protect.

And there's the ones at their job. Their partners. Their teams.

Eventually, every one of them has to make a choice between the two families.

It was the one thing that Aaron, Jason and Dave all shared. They'd all picked the work.

They'd all paid the price.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

It began before Spencer Reid had ever stepped foot into the FBI, before Aaron Hotchner had even considered that there was a future for him in another man's arms.

It began with a boy who saw his father choose his work over his family again and again and again.

Reid could talk for hours, and had indeed done so, about the nature vs. nurture debate and whether the likelihood of personality disorders developing in children was made greater by parental neglect or childhood trauma or whether it was entirely genetics. Or perhaps how the two would intertwine and create the perfect storm of unavoidable tragedy on their path.

Gideon himself would be the first to tell you that he was no stranger to narcissism.

There were missed bedtimes, a graduation ceremony with a seat filled with discarded expectations, and the final betrayal: when the child walked away, the father didn't follow.

When the child came back, he was no longer child but a man grown, and a stranger.

He saw his father with another man, close enough in age that they could have been brothers, and upon this man the father heaped all the praise and encouragement he'd neglected to give his own son.

 ** _Resentful stalkers_** _pursue a vendetta because of a sense of grievance against the victims – motivated mainly by the desire to frighten and distress the victim._

At first. But then it changed.

Even the man, bitter and ostracized from his peers by his own brilliance, could see that his father had found someone special. Someone remarkable. Someone who could shine brightly enough at his side that his father would _have_ to notice him. They were two halves of a single whole.

 ** _Intimacy seekers_** _seek to establish an intimate, loving relationship with their victim. Such stalkers often believe that the victim is a long-sought-after soul mate, and they were 'meant' to be together._

The man planned.

He learnt.

The magic?

It was all a part of it. A ripple of space where the world shifted just enough that it became possible, a relic of an older time when magic was commonplace.

At least, that was what he believed. All he knew for certain was that this world allowed him the ability to create a place where he and his perfect companion together could burn brighter than anyone would have ever believed possible.

He got his revenge on his father. And he used him, used him to learn all he could about his new obsession. His father would be the final blow against the man to bring him into his arms. It would be simple. Perfect. Brilliant.

Jason Gideon had always loved birds.

Then Spencer Reid chose another without even considering how this would make Stephen feel.

 ** _Obsessive love_** _is a hypothetical state in which one person feels an overwhelming obsessive desire to possess another person toward whom they feel a strong attraction, with an inability to accept failure or rejection._

Stephen burned the world around his love, leaving him vulnerable, and then took from him the creature who'd dared to try and possess what was rightfully his.

And then he swept in to pick up the pieces of the man he'd broken.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

 _"Can we leave this space?"_ JJ stayed calm and collected, recovered from her shock at seeing her son so altered in what felt, to them, like mere weeks. _"This… ripple… that he's trapped us in? How come Reid can come here? Won't he notice time has passed when he leaves?"_

 _"You can't leave while the spell is active,"_ Gideon responded, turning his head to stare at Hotch. _"Reid is a creature of the outside world, and we're not. Not anymore. Time will pass normally for him while he's here, just as it would outside. If we want to leave, we have to break the spell. It's tied to the strongest one. To break them all, we need to break that one first."_

 _"Mine,"_ Hotch said quietly. _"How?"_

 _"I don't know."_ The admittance was reluctant. _"There's a key to it, but only Stephen knows what it is. Mine was… mine was familial love. If I could repay the sins of the father to the son. I failed in that, and now it's too late. He has you. And he feels stronger about you than he ever did about me."_

 _"He despises you,"_ Morgan added, feathers rustling slightly as he shivered. _"He could have made the spell painless. Mine is, when he lets me be human. But he controls it. He made yours complex and torturous."_

Hotch knew that too.

 _"Because of Reid. He's obsessed with Reid, believes that they're destined to be together."_ Rossi had his profiling tone on, posture rigid and locked in thought. _"Jason, your key was based on what he perceived as your failure to be his father. Aaron, yours has to be based on Reid. It's the only thing that makes sense. He's a borderline erotomanic stalker, obsessive and delusional. Maybe it's because you're in a position of control over Reid, as his boss?"_

For a profiler, his friend could miss the blatantly obvious sometimes.

He told them the truth.

 _"We… we were together. That's why Stephen lashed out like this, he must have been… watching us."_

Shocked silence.

 _"That could be it,"_ Gideon said finally, and there was no sign of sentiment in his voice anymore. He'd been a bird so long maybe human emotions were harder for him to grasp. _"If you can prove that you love him… romantic love, it might be the key. One of them, anyway."_

 _"What's the other?"_ Will asked, because the others were still staring at Hotch like he'd grown an extra head.

Hotch wished he hadn't asked because as soon as Gideon had admitted that his spell tied the others together, he'd suspected as much. He just didn't want them knowing. If he had to act on it to save their lives, he didn't want them stopping him.

 _"Your death. If you die, we're all free."_

Hotch waited until the others had moved away, separating to try and deal with everything that had happened. Then he approached Gideon; the raptor perched in a tree unmoving and observing the direction of the house.

 _"You can leave here. You've done it before, to spy on us."_ It's not a question.

 _"Yes."_

 _"Can you do it without Stephen?"_

 _"Yes."_

The goshawk swivelled his regard back onto Hotch and waited for his request, although they both knew what it was. Hotch pushed what he'd retrieved from the sad pile under the bush forward with a webbed claw. It sat between them like a wall they couldn't breech.

 _"You say you want to help us. Will you take this to him?"_

In the time that followed, Hotch could hear the soft sound of the goshawk's quick breathing. _"Yes."_

Hotch held the credentials up in his bill and the hawk took it with a careful talon, claws cutting the thin leather as easily as a knife through butter. He could hear them grating along the metal of his badge within.

 _"Why didn't you try to get a message to us sooner?"_ He asked because he had to, because there was something resigned about his old colleague's behaviour that was far too much like acceptance of his fate.

 _"Because it would have been a betrayal to my son."_

That wasn't all. Hotch could feel it. _"And?"_

Gideon closed his eyes before he answered. _"I told you. There are two keys to your spell, same as mine. Love, to free us. And betrayal."_

 _"Betraying him would have broken the spell?"_

The hawk didn't reply, but Hotch didn't need him to.

Betrayal equalled death. He wasn't worried. He'd never betray Reid.

He'd rather burn than betray him.

Black wings barred with white spread above him; Gideon preparing to fly to the man Hotch loved.

 _"Wait, does it still count?"_ Hotch queried suddenly, numb horror sinking into his bones. _"Does this still count as betraying your son?"_

 _'Will this break your spell?'_ was the question left unsaid between them. _'Did I just ask you to die?'_

His voice when it came rang with wry acceptance. _"Yes."_

It didn't stop him from going before he could tell him not to, and a part of Hotch went with him.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

He called Emily because a part of him was still the Reid of six months ago, still the man who walked into danger with his team at his side.

He wasn't a man who went in alone.

He called Garcia as well because they were still a team, even now, and someone needed to be there for Henry if he didn't come back. His loss would mean little on the tail of Henry's grief for his parents, just a small set-back in his recovery. Garcia would be better for him anyway.

When they arrived at his door, they both wore cagey expressions, looking at him like something was wrong. Maybe something was.

He wasn't completely sure that he was still sane either.

"You want me," Emily began slowly. "To help you break into some guy's house that you've been seeing because he's… weird? Reid, _you're weird_. Doesn't it make sense that you'd attract the same?"

Reid breathed slowly. He hadn't wanted to tell her the whole of it, or Garcia. He still wasn't going to, not entirely.

How could he possibly explain how he'd looked at a bird and seen something familiar in its eyes?

"I think he's been stalking me," he said finally. Emily went quiet and furious, and something dark began to simmer in her eyes. "I've seen his… him around. Watching me and Henry. He shows all the signs of fixating on me, possibly to a dangerous level. I… I need your help. Please."

He couldn't exactly tell her about the goshawk, not yet.

Or the kingfisher with the tilt to his head, just like someone he had known once.

And certainly not the swan with the painfully familiar bearing.

"He's stalking you and you want to go to his _house_?" Garcia shrilled. "Reid, hun, are you insane? I know you miss the FBI and the action and maybe you're a little adrenaline deprived but you're not Morgan, you can't just go kicking doors in… oh." She trailed off at the mention of her friend, blinking back tears furiously.

Henry appeared in the doorway, a red line across one cheek where his pillow had pressed, and eyes gunky with sleep. "There's a bird at my window," he announced, breaking the tension. "He wants in."

Reid's heart tried to throw itself out his mouth and he was moving before the two women had time to process the odd statement, darting to Henry's room and shoving the door open.

The goshawk stared at him through the glass, and for a moment the disappointment that it wasn't a swan almost overrode the fierce bite of fear the sight of the creature inspired.

"What is _that_?" Emily said behind him, stunned, but he ignored her and opened the window.

"It's Uncle Spence's friend's sparrowhawk," Henry answered with a yawn. "He follows us a lot. I don't like Uncle Spence's friend. He's mean. He _lies_."

The goshawk hopped in and held out a patient talon, something dark held tightly in his grip.

Something in Reid broke a little at the sight of the warped leather, recognising it instantly. He knew whose face was going to look out at him even before he reached out and took the credentials, turning so Emily and Garcia could see what he held.

"Oh my god, what," Garcia stated flatly, going pale and pressing back against the wall. "Reid, is that…"

Emily said nothing but she reached out and opened it, sensing the crippling fear staying his hand.

Aaron.

Aaron's badge. Aaron's ID. Aaron's face frozen in a moment long ago.

"How did you get this?" he asked the bird. Emily stared at him like he'd expected her to, watching him talk to an animal as though anticipating an answer. "Did you get...?" He stopped and choked on the words, pushing back cruel hope violently. He wished Henry wasn't here. "Did Aaron give it to you?"

A startled sound behind him. He couldn't look at them. He couldn't see their faces.

The hawk nodded stiffly on a neck unsuited to the movement.

"Oh shit," Emily whispered.

Reid couldn't think.

"Is he… alive?" Garcia said, her voice hitching. He wanted to hug her, to thank her for asking what he couldn't, but the words tangled in his mouth. "Are _they_ alive?"

The hawk nodded again, slowly.

"Can you take us there?" He found his words.

The hawk nodded, one last time.

"Okay," Emily said finally. "Okay. Let's go. The world has gone mad and we're following a bird, but let's go."

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Gideon hadn't returned by the time the sun began to dip over the horizon. Hotch watched the sky restlessly, the water cool under his body, waiting for the pain he knew was coming. He viewed it fatalistically. Nothing he could do would stop it from happening, he just had to deal with it when it happened.

It almost felt like repentance.

For Jack, for Reid, for his team and the months of their lives they now knew that they'd lost. For the grief their families had suffered.

For Gideon.

The moon appeared like a promise and he felt the ripple of the spell up his spine as the thin white light began to glimmer on the water's surface. He knew that the others were nearby, watching even though he'd told them not to, their silent sympathy and love almost tangible. He wondered if any of them would join him tonight.

 _"Someone's coming,"_ Will said suddenly, his voice faint as though far away. _"Awh, Aaron, it's Reid! And Emily, they're coming! Gideon found them!"_

 _"Hold off on changing back if you can."_ JJ that time, and frantic. _"If he doesn't see you change, we'll never get him to believe it."_

Pain washed over him in a wave and he spread his wings and trumpeted loudly, the sound a hollow echo through the trees. _"Hurry."_

 _"Hold on."_ Rossi appeared out of the trees, landing on his wing and whistling soothingly. _"Come on, Aaron. Hold on. This is it. This is the end of this."_

The moon gleamed.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

The hawk faltered as soon as they stepped into the forest, its wings drooping as is landed with an awkward skittering on a branch. Reid watched as it swayed as though in disorientating pain.

"Is it okay?" Emily asked, keeping her distance from him.

"I don't know." He didn't think so. He reached up to it, trying to coax it onto his arm. The raptor came down reluctantly, shuffling up his jacket sleeve, talons leaving long painful scratches despite its care. Reaching Reid's shoulder, it slumped against his neck and panted, clearly exhausted.

Two small, dark shapes burst out of the foliage around them and dived around their heads, calling shrilly with piercing songs. Emily ducked as one skimmed her hair with a wingtip. It grabbed a lock of hair and tugged on it with tiny claws, wings beating rapidly and forked tail brushing her shoulder.

"Oh, this night just keeps getting fucking weirder," she yelped, pulling her hair out of the small talons and dropping her hand to her gun.

Reid stared at the other bird as it hovered in front of him, meeting his gaze attentively. "We should follow them," he said softly, unsure of what goaded him to that remark. "They want us to follow them. Quickly, come on."

"Oh, why not? I mean, we've come this far on the trail of a bird… why not a little further?" Her voice was heavy with sarcasm, but she still followed.

He had a feeling she always would.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

He still didn't know how long the transformation took.

He was never conscious enough to count.

The pain came and it took with it everything that made him human, leaving him a broken form screaming for release.

This time he tried to push it back. _Just till he gets here. Just hold it until he gets here._

 _Spencer. I love you._

His last thought was one of love before the pain became too much and his body began to shift despite him.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

The cry was raw and animalistic and Reid began to sprint, needing to find the source. The birds whirled around his head, goading him on, and he could hear Emily keeping pace behind him.

The lake at night was a pitch black mirror, cold and empty except for the dim reflection of the moon off the snowy back of the waiting swan. Waiting for him, he knew, although he had no idea why the notion seemed so certain to him.

If this was madness, it had been unbearably kind in its descent upon him, and he almost laughed with the tragedy of it.

Silver light flashed on white feathers and the bird turned wildly, shaking its head and calling out, a mournful sound. And again with a voice that was almost human, throwing its wings open and sending sprays of water fountaining outward from its wingtips.

His mother's voice stole the air from his lungs, a long held memory of a murmured verse. _"There, she poured out her words of grief, tearfully, in faint tones, in harmony with sadness, just as the swan sings once, in dying, its own funeral song."_

Henry. _"He sings because he misses someone."_

Reid opened his mouth to say something but the light grew until it blinded him, hiding the swan from view. Emily cried out, startled.

His own words. _"Swans don't sing."_

Someone else screamed and he wasn't sure if it was him or not.

The light cleared and he was on his knees with Emily's fingers biting into his arm. The swan had vanished. The moonlight gleamed off pale skin instead of feathers.

He stumbled up and a man raised his head and looked back at him from the water where the bird had sat, face pale and gaunt, shadowed. Dark hair limp with dirt, matted against his forehead. Dirty and half-dressed, but his eyes were still _his._ Exactly the same as the last time they'd looked at each other, in that instant of anger before Reid had walked away.

"Aaron," breathed Reid, the logic and rationality he'd spent his life believing in crashing down around him.

In the end, he didn't even care how it happened.

Aaron was alive.

And Spencer Reid blazed to life with him.


	3. Arc 2: The resurrection of me

_Arc Two: The Resurrection of Me_

 **Thanks to my beta, Greeneyedconstellations!**

 **.**

 **.**

 _Farewell, all joys! O Death, come close mine eyes!_

 _More Geese than Swans now live, more Fools than Wise._

 **Orlando Gibbons,** ** _The Silver Swan_**

 ** _._**

The pain receded and Hotch lifted his head to find Spencer staring at him like he was seeing a ghost.

Maybe he was. Hotch still wasn't entirely sure of his own survival.

A stumbling step forward, and Reid moved as like he was walking on ground that had suddenly become unsteady beneath him, as though he was in the process of falling down and his body just hadn't realized it yet. Hotch stood, reaching out with an arm that felt thick and unwieldy after the lightness of his wing, intending to catch him.

Emily stood behind Reid and her face was chalk white and unfocused, her world shattering around her. Even the trees seemed to be frozen in that moment. Nothing moved except for the quiet lapping of liquid on the shore and Hotch's panting breaths.

Water splashed and Reid had finished falling, staggering into the water and wading through, tumbling into Hotch's arms with a wild, keening gasp that tore as it left his lips.

"Aaron," he breathed, and then the arms Hotch had dreamed about for two weeks were wrapped around him and pulling tight, hurting, cutting into him. Rigid with fear and trembling almost convulsively, it struck Hotch anew that he had missed Reid intently for only fourteen days.

Reid had grieved him for an untold number of months. To him, Hotch had just impossibly risen from the dead.

Hotch held his friend and lover closely as the man came apart, and their hearts beat in unison.

He never wanted to let go.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Everything had stopped.

Emily was behind him somewhere, he thought, but he couldn't be sure anymore because the world had stopped and it had thrown him completely off kilter.

Aaron was there and he was real and solid and standing where the swan had been, _alive,_ and Reid found himself chanting the word in his head as he tried to regain his equilibrium. _Alivealivealivealive._

He needed to touch. To know. As soon as he recognised the need, he found himself almost tripping into the water, with no memory of when he'd started moving.

Bare arms brushed against cold skin and Aaron curled around him, their heartbeats hammering in unison. He was warm, so fucking warm and alive, _still alive_ , despite the bitter chill of the darkening night that left Reid shaking desperately, his teeth chattering together.

The water swirled around them, bitingly cold, and Reid was glad for Aaron's steady arms because if he hadn't been holding him, he knew he'd have slipped under the surface and been helpless to save himself.

"How are you alive?" he mouthed into Aaron's chest, because his head had dropped to press against the burning heat of the other man and he didn't have the strength to lift it again. "You died. You died, and I buried you and you were _dead_."

It was with a numb sort of resignation that he realized he was crying, and the shaking had become a shuddering as his mind rebelled against the impossibility of this moment.

"I don't know," Aaron said, voice hollow and fractured. "I don't know, but I am and I'm here. Shh, I'm here. I'm okay. We're okay."

They weren't.

This had to be a dream. And when he woke up, this would be gone, and nothing would be okay again.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

In the end he dragged Spencer from the lake. The other man refused to relinquish his hold, either out of fear that Hotch would vanish or fly away somehow, or out of an inability to move his frozen body. Hotch felt a sharp sting of anxiety at the chill emanating from his partner as the shivering slowed and stopped.

Shivering was good. Not shivering was bad.

Footsteps crunched on the smooth pebbles of the shoreline and Hotch turned his gaze, however reluctantly, away from Reid long enough to meet Morgan's dark expression. Human.

Behind him, a blonde head bent over Emily, soothing hands settled on the woman's shoulders as JJ did her best to try and stop Emily from slipping into the semi-conscious state of shock that Hotch had carelessly let Reid tumble into. A bird sat on her shoulder, smaller than the kingfisher. Rossi was nowhere in sight.

"Hey, Reid," Morgan called in a soft voice, reaching out, his mouth tightening slightly in concern. "Come on man, snap out of it. It us, we're here. We're really here."

Reid shuddered once and turned wide, dark eyes onto Morgan. Hotch could see his throat shift as he swallowed heavily, swaying very marginally away from the other man and towards Hotch again, as though Hotch had become the one constant he could cling to. He didn't say anything, hadn't said anything since asking him how Hotch could possibly be alive in a voice that suggested he didn't quite believe it himself.

"Shit, Hotch," Morgan hissed, moving closer than he would have ever done before this nightmare. Hotch could almost feel the warmth of his skin, a noticeable difference from the icy weight pressed against him. He ran his hand down Reid's arm, gaze locked on Hotch's. "We gotta get him warm. And Emily, she's freaking out."

Bizarrely, Hotch chose this moment to note how clean and unsullied Morgan was by their capture. He still wore his bullet resistant vest, the FBI acronym sorely out of place in this strange, preternatural world. His badge was still hooked on his belt. No gun, but everything else was pristine. No wonder Reid was shying away from him.

In comparison, Hotch was a changed man, filthy and wild from his agonising, daily forays into the lake, and from laying on the forest floor in only his trousers. Morgan was a ghost. Exactly how he'd looked the day they'd been taken.

For Reid, aged months in that time, it must be like looking into the past, as though his nightmares had suddenly caught up to him.

"I've tried making fires before," Hotch told him quietly, because although they didn't need the heat, they did crave the light when the shadows grew long and threatening. "Nothing burns here."

He tugged Reid after him, making slow progress over to Emily and JJ, and pushing him down next to her. Reid fought him, hands grabbing ineffectually at his arm, and Hotch wondered distantly how cold he must be for his normally agile fingers to have turned so sluggish and weak.

Emily's eyes darted up to his face and examined him carefully, lingering slowly on the mud on his knees and the stiffness of the fabric from repeated soakings. "You look like shit, Hotch," she said finally, scooting closer to Reid and cuddling against him. Reid slumped, finally giving up his fight to hang onto Hotch, and staring blankly at the ground. "And you stink."

She'd never been one to pull her punches.

He hadn't realized how much he'd missed her until now.

Neither, apparently, had JJ. If her stuttering snuffles were any sign of anything, she was barely holding back tears as she sat down heavily on the other side of Emily, hugging her tightly. Will hopped on her shoulder, tilting his head back and forth and singing lightly in short bursts. Hotch noted dully that they couldn't hear his voice anymore.

Ironically, this meant if he turned human alone one night, he would be as voiceless as he had previously been as a swan.

Hotch sat on the other side of Reid, letting the man lean his head on his shoulder, and wrapped an arm around him. He let his hand rest on Emily's back, needing to touch her as well. By the way she leaned very slightly back into his hand, the feeling was mutual. They all needed to reconnect.

Morgan took his vest off wordlessly, handing his shirt to Hotch. Hotch tucked it around Reid carefully, the man's continued silence making his blood turn cold.

"Okay," Emily said finally, shuddering just once, her eyes focusing as she shook off the weirdness of the evening. "Okay. Is anybody, _any one of you_ , going to tell us just what in the hell is going on?"

Hotch didn't even know where to begin.

Luckily, JJ did.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

At some point, Hotch had moved away.

Reid came back to himself and the night had deepened. Emily was a warm weight by his side, and the endless, aching cold that had been drowning him had receded somewhat. JJ's voice was a constant, lilting presence, drawing him back to himself. Telling an impossible story, speaking in riddles.

Alive, though. He didn't think that was ever going to stop stunning him. He'd never take it for granted again that the people around him would stay there.

He stood, flinching as sore and stiff muscles protested, someone's shirt wrapped around his shoulders. Emily glanced up at him, eyes worried, JJ at her side. He stared at JJ for a long moment, drinking in the sight of her.

She was alive.

They were all alive.

The shock gave way to a cautious happiness. _Henry_. Henry still had his parents. He couldn't even find words for that. There was no phrase in the English language adequate enough to describe the relief one felt upon having those that were lost returned to them.

And as unmarked as the day they'd been taken.

How strange they would think them, with Emily and Reid both noticeably changed by the time they'd spent apart. Clearly no time had passed at all for them.

There was a hollowness to Hotch's face that hadn't been there before, as though he knew what pain was now, and dreaded it.

He nodded to JJ without words because he still couldn't talk through the lump in his throat and she smiled calmly, knowingly. In her expression the promise that later they would talk, that she wasn't going anywhere. She'd still be here when he returned.

Will and Rossi were nowhere in sight, but that didn't worry him. If something had happened to them, JJ wouldn't look so calm. She'd have told them, either with her carefully constructed words, honed by years of delivering bad news, or by her behaviour. They were still profilers, even here in this impossible existence.

They let him go.

He found Hotch crouching by the lake, cupping water in his hands and rubbing his arms down, washing off the grime he'd clearly stopped caring about at some point. Reid imagined he'd have stopped caring about his appearance pretty quickly too, if he was abruptly turned into a large water fowl.

"The English word 'swan', derived from Indo-European roots. _Swen._ It means to sound… to sing."

Hotch paused and turned on his heel, still crouched, looking up at Reid warily. "Swans don't sing," he said finally. "Trust me. I think I'm pretty well qualified on the subject."

"Henry says differently," Reid teased, his voice cracking at this moment of normality between them. "Actually, numerous mythology and classical pieces of literature make reference to the mute swan singing beautifully just once throughout their lives, at the moment… at the moment of death." He trailed off, seeing Hotch flinch.

"I am alive," Hotch said, standing and shaking his arms. Reid could see water droplets glistening on his skin. They didn't seem to bother him, even though their breath was misting in front of them every time they exhaled. "I know this is a shock, god knows I've barely come to terms with it and it's been weeks…"

"Two hundred and one days," Reid corrected him. Hotch paused, frowned. Paled. Reid continued, cruelly perhaps, but the numbers haunted him and he needed them to hurt someone else just as deeply, just the once. "Four thousand, eight hundred and twenty-two hours."

"Six months," Hotch murmured, looking ill.

"Six months and nineteen days." Reid closed his eyes, focused on breathing. "Since you died. Since you all died. You sent me away, and then you died."

"I'm sorry," Hotch said eventually, which was ridiculous because Reid wasn't the one who had lost six months of his life to this dreamlike existence. "I'm sorry you went through this. Spencer, please, believe me when I tell you that I would never leave you voluntarily. Not like this. Not ever like this."

Reid believed him. "I don't know how Jack is," he admitted, not willing to touch on the raw emotion congealing in the short distance between them. "I… I don't remember much of the funerals. There were so many. So many, Aaron, you can't imagine… After the third everyone shut down a little. And then I had Henry and I had to make him my everything because without you, without the team… I was nothing. By the time I could think clearly again, Jessica had taken him and moved away somewhere to start again…"

Hotch looked blank. Reid wondered whether he'd been letting himself think of his son, or if he'd been pushing the thought of him away to stay sane.

He took those faltering last few steps to breach the distance between them and laid his hand on Hotch's arm. Determination sparked up his chest, following the sudden crashing cementing of what he knew now, what all his senses were telling him was the absolute and irrevocable truth. They were _alive_ and this could be fixed.

"We're going to fix this," Reid said firmly, JJ's soft words from earlier returning and reeling through his head, endless possibilities and outcomes presenting themselves to him in a whirlwind. He felt focused for the first time in months, as though he finally had a goal, the most important one he'd ever had. Things might not ever be normal again, they couldn't possibly be, but they could be _better_. "We're bringing you home. To Jack." _To us._

Hotch exhaled again slowly, and they were close enough now that his breath warmed Reid's skin. They stood head to head with each other, within inches of each other's heights, close enough that one could lean in and bring their lips together endlessly.

One of them did. Later Reid wouldn't be able to say with certainty which of them it had been.

All he could say was that when Aaron's mouth found his and claimed it with a slick hunger that set him instantly aflame, it was everything he had craved and more.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Hotch could say with certainty that he had never before felt the need to be close to someone burn in him this fiercely. Perhaps it was the new lines on Spencer's face that he wanted to smooth away, or the suggestion of his bones shifting under delicate skin, far less of him than there had been previously, but everything about him called to Hotch and whispered of home.

There were no words left unsaid this time.

The first time had been desperate and haunted by the knowledge of Emily's death and looming resurrection. They had suffocated under everything left unsaid.

This was nothing like that.

Hours later would find them together still and as the sky began to lighten faintly with the merest whisper of dawn, their time ran out.

Again.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

The sky began to trace tendrils of morning across it; every moment it lightened was another moment that Aaron weakened. Reid could see it in him. He feared the coming dawn, and it filled Reid himself with a matching trepidation.

He thought back to the moment swan had become man, and thought that perhaps if the bird was able, he would have screamed.

He burned with the desire to fix this, but he didn't have enough information yet. He needed to formulate a plan. He needed more.

"We need to see the others," he said softly to the other man, and Aaron tore his eyes away from the sky as though he was being forced to turn his back on something deadly hurtling towards them. He stared at Reid blankly for a moment before nodding slowly, so slowly.

They found Emily pacing on the shoreline, lost in thought, JJ watching her.

Morgan watching the sky. His eyes flickered to Hotch, and Reid's blood ran cold at the worry he saw there. There was darkness coming with the sun.

 _It's not the same,_ Reid realized. They weren't a team here. They couldn't step back into the team role like a familiar pair of shoes. Here, Hotch wasn't the leader. He was lost. Morgan wasn't their rock, because when Hotch fell he'd fallen, too. JJ was still their heart, but she was so busy trying to stop their pain that she couldn't see past it.

Emily turned to face him and her expression bolstered him.

He wasn't a leader. He never had been.

But he needed to be one now.

"Quickly," he said sharply, seeing JJ snap around to face him. Morgan lifted his head and frowned slightly. "What do we need to know?"

"Hotch is the key," Emily repeated, JJ's words from earlier. "Some true love bullshit, it's a twisted fairy tale this guy has trapped them in."

"Bullshit or not, how you gonna prove love? It's not something you can see." Morgan looked slightly discontented by the whole thing. "And you can't exactly just stand in front of the world and scream, 'I'm in love with my boss who, oh yeah, is trapped as a swan.' Not unless you want to end up committed."

They couldn't.

But they knew someone who could.

"Garcia always says," Reid said slowly, a grin sneaking onto his face that hadn't been there for months. It felt strange and slipped away quickly. The muscles ached from the memory. "The internet is a stage."

"He hates betrayal," Hotch said from behind Reid, and his tone was both thoughtful and a warning. "He did all this because of what he saw as a betrayal – Gideon's betrayal, and later yours. It wouldn't just be admitting our love in front of an audience. The spell would require more. A vow, that your… love… is eternal." He choked on the words. Reid could almost hear him blushing at the soppiness behind them.

Aaron didn't understand. This wasn't going to be a challenge for him.

"When you died, it took me three months to visit your grave," Reid said without looking at him. He looked at JJ instead, locked his eyes with hers. She knew he wasn't talking to her. "When I finally did, I only had one thing to ask of it."

"What?" Aaron's voice was a whisper. Everyone paused, waiting. It was the rehearsal for the vows he'd make to save all their lives.

That didn't make them any less true.

"That if you could do one thing for me, just one thing… If you could stop being dead, that I would never, ever stop loving you."

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

He couldn't look at Reid. There was too much pain there, layered and woven so carefully through those words that Hotch thought it might be impossible to ever unwind them. The pain had become a part of them, a part of who they were, and even once this was over it would still be there.

Maybe that was how it should be. Maybe this was the making of them.

He reached out, wrapped his hand around Spencer's. Squeezed.

Spencer squeezed back.

The sky lightened.

"There's something else," JJ said, and Hotch's heart tried to leap out his throat and he knew that his hand had gone clammy with horror, because Reid twitched and shot a sharp look at him. _Don't, JJ_ , he whispered in his head, because what she was going to say would destroy them all. _He can't handle it, he can't know, not now._

It was selfish. He needed to know. But Hotch wanted to keep him how he was now just that little bit longer, with hope on his face and in his heart.

JJ ignored his silent pleas. He suspected that even if he had voiced them out loud, she still wouldn't have listened.

"Stephen made two endings to the curse," she said firmly, not looking at Hotch. Not giving him the chance to order her to stop. "This one, the one we're working towards. Or… or Aaron's death. He's made it so that if Aaron dies, we're free."

Reid didn't react, just narrowed his eyes. "He's a sadist. The spell causes you pain." He was talking to himself. Hotch didn't answer. "We'll have to be careful not to do anything that he could constitute a betrayal."

Morgan laughed darkly. "Everything is a betrayal to this guy, he's twisted. Hell, Reid, Hotch just being here with us might set him off. He's a time bomb."

Hotch opened his mouth to say something, to reassure them and to stop the worry from stealing back into them, but there was a flurry of blue and brown feathers around him, a wildly shrieking kingfisher diving around their ears in a panic.

Reid looked at him, curious. "Dave," Hotch said, eyes following the bird. Dave. Terrified.

The kingfisher vanished into the wood before remerging. Another bird joined him, Will. Both out of their minds with alarm.

Hotch already knew what they were trying to say. He'd realized as soon as Reid had said the word betrayal.

"Where's Gideon?" Morgan asked suddenly, bolting upright. Reid paled. Hotch wondered if that was out of shock, or the sudden realization that Gideon was here, too. That the man who'd walked out on him so many years ago had been trapped here that whole time.

Maybe seeing Gideon again was somehow more impossible for his mind to comprehend than the idea of magic.

Rossi cried out again in a piercing voice and Hotch followed him, not knowing if the others were behind him. He'd sent Gideon to Reid, even though he'd suspected the consequences of it. He'd still done it.

He followed.

Behind him, the sun touched the treetops.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Reid followed Hotch because the man had turned deathly pale, and the others had fallen silent. Emily ran to catch up and laid a cool hand on his arm. When he looked at her, her eyes were on Morgan's face, and he could see what the others already knew.

Gideon. Jason Gideon. The man who'd made him who he was, for better or worse. Here.

When he saw him, his first thought was that he was exactly the same as the day he'd walked off the jet and out of their lives.

His second thought was that he was wrong.

Gideon was a changed man.

Cool, familiar eyes meet his as though the others weren't even there. "Gideon," Reid greeted him, stepping forward, the others forming a loose ring behind him. His face felt strange, fake. Like he'd suddenly donned a mask, a frozen rictus.

Gideon nodded slowly, his gaze endless, so much like the goshawk that Reid felt goosebumps ripple up his arms. He was human, leaning against a tree trunk, arms wrapped loosely around his legs.

He didn't look like a dying man, but Reid had seen the horror stealing onto their faces at the mention of the word 'betrayal,' and he knew now who the goshawk was. Who they'd sent to him. Who had led him here. The knowledge that Gideon had been there this whole time, watching him, it was… inexorable.

"Can we stop this?" he asked anyway, because Gideon still hadn't said anything and maybe he'd been a bird for so long, he'd forgotten how.

Gideon shook his head. Opened his mouth. Closed his eyes, the barest hint of sweat on his brow. Hiding his pain. Like he always had. And once more, it would take him away from them. Except this time, there was no possibility of a respite.

"I fulfilled the conditions," he said finally, his voice husky and broken. In his voice, if not in his face, Reid could hear the end. "Love or betrayal. My choice. Always my choice." He looked up at them and his mouth quirked into a fractured smile. "Don't even think about blaming yourself for this, Hotshot. Not every failure is yours."

"Some of them are," Hotch whispered, and Reid tried to press back against him, to draw some of that pain out of his lover. Hotch pulled away. Even slightly, it hurt. Reid wasn't ready for him to pull away, not yet. "This one is."

"I was a dead man as soon as the curse took," Gideon murmured. "Or if you really want to be a fatalist, the first time I chose my work over my son. Maybe he was already heading down a dark path, but if I had been there, I could have seen it. Would have seen it. And then I would never have betrayed my team either. But I have. Here I am now. Atoning."

Something warm touched Reid's neck and Hotch convulsed suddenly, buckled into him. Reid staggered under the abrupt weight, his breath knocked out of him.

The sun.

JJ shouted something and Morgan shoved past, grabbed Hotch by the arm. "Lake!" he roared. "We gotta get him to the lake, now!"

Reid turned, and stopped. Aaron's face had twisted, tensed. There was a soundless agony on his lips. The night on the lake, under the moonlight, Reid had fooled himself that this was beautiful.

This close, there was no mistaking it.

This was torture.

The sun glimmered through the leaves and left dappled patterns on their skin, and where it touched Aaron the skin rippled and pulsed. The swan was tearing out from within him. Morgan dragged him away, right as he found his voice.

He began to scream and Reid had taken a single step forward to follow them, but the sound sent him to his knees, and he found himself covering his ears, nose thick with the smell of burning, the half-remembered scent of smoke.

A hand took his but it wasn't a hand he knew.

Aaron's screams filled the woods and Reid clung to Gideon as though he was drowning in them.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Gideon kept talking to him for what felt like bare moments. Reid barely listened, still burning with Aaron. The screams had gone on for an impossible time. Barely ten minutes in total, but at least for a millennium.

He would remember Gideon's words despite his inattention.

He wouldn't say goodbye.

Something pressed into his hand. He tightened his fingers around it, feeling it crush slightly in his grip. It cut his palm.

"Give it to him. It's how he'll get to you, when the time is right. The moon must wane crescent, the same as the night the spell was formed."

The word sunk in. Reid lifted his head, snapping out of the fugue he was in. The morning was full, warm and thick.

Gideon was next to him still, but he was long gone.

Reid opened his hand and the feather blurred with his vision.

Maybe Reid had always been more like Gideon than he'd admitted.

He found Emily on the shoreline, alone.

Not alone. Surrounded by birds. They sat silently, watching the snowy back of the drifting swan.

Reid stood silent in the tree line, observing them. Putting off the moment when he had to walk out there and tell them that while they were saving Aaron's life, one of them had lost theirs. Maybe they already knew. He still paused. Examined the birds. He knew them all, knew them academically from Henry's books and his drawings. Their natures and diets, their wingspans. He knew them also from the books his mother had taught him, their myths and superstitions. The cruelty behind their forms.

A raven. The mediator between life and death.

Swallows. Two of them. Sailors would tattoo a single swallow on their body at the beginning of a long voyage. A second if they returned safely. If the sailor drowned, the swallow would carry their soul to the afterlife.

The kingfisher. The _Halycon_. The body of a kingfisher was believed to have been able to ward off storms, but only if dead. The body of the kingfisher would protect the holder.

He was mocking them. He was saying to them, 'you can have your hope, but you'll still die in the end.'

Reid swallowed hard and ran his fingers over the feather in his hand. White stained with red from the cut on his palm.

The hawk. Carrier of the souls of the dead, the souls of warriors. The souls of the doomed.

They had heard him. He could feel their eyes on him. Emily turned pale. He didn't know what she saw in his eyes, but he could guess.

The swan lifted its head and turned to him, and he saw then that the hoary feathers were soiled and streaked with blood. Its wings trailed in the water limply. Feathers drifted in the current. The shoreline was broken by furrows in the mud, where something had thrashed. Been dragged. Dark, sticky trails on the stones. He had suffered.

"Gideon is dead," he said finally, because he couldn't say anything else. Emily closed her eyes, just for a second.

Gideon was dead. Stephen's hold on him had finally broken.

This. This was what it was like to feel true anger.

Reid had wondered.

His blood burned and he took the memory of smoke and pulled it into himself, welcoming it.

It was his turn to set the world aflame.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

He was barely conscious, barely able to think over the twitching, rolling spasms that still shook his body as it tried to fight off the feeling of having been torn open from the inside out. He still knew when Spencer walked out into the clearing.

He looked up with eyes that blurred and the forms of his friends were invisible to him, smeared as though they were painted from oil and someone had swept a careless finger through them.

The only clear thing was Reid, and Hotch almost cried out in shock.

Because he'd never see him like this.

Reid stared at him with a stranger's eyes, wild and fierce and _violent,_ and if Hotch hadn't known the kindness that those eyes were also capable of, he would have feared them. He did fear them. Those were Stephen's eyes, halfway to madness and glorying in the descent. Stephen's eyes in Spencer's face, and Hotch remembered numbly how close to insanity they all were.

"Gideon's dead," Reid said, but his voice was hollow and cold and there was a promise of darkness in it. If Hotch had been human at that moment, had been his team-leader, that voice would have had him pulling Reid out of the field faster than any of them could breathe.

He'd failed to do so before and a man had died with Elle's bullet in him. He could see it happening again, vividly.

He looked at Reid now and knew with perfect clarity how this would end. With a man standing over a body and delighting in the victory of it. He just didn't know if it would be Spencer or Stephen who revelled. They were the ones who hunted those who hurt the weak, but they all danced on the knife's edge of becoming what they fought against.

Reid was closer than any of them to falling off that edge.

Or jumping.

Reid held out his hand and a feather fell loose, caught in the breeze. Morgan caught it in a quick talon, hopping across the stones. White barred with black. Gideon's.

"Twelve days, we'll come for you in twelve days," Reid said to him. There was no kindness or love in his voice. Hotch didn't even know if the man was capable of feeling either at that moment. Revenge was a powerful motivator. "Gideon said if you carry that feather, you can leave this place. We'll come get you at sunset, when you're human, and we'll end this."

 _With blood_ , his eyes said, and Hotch became suddenly aware of the tendrils of red washing from his feathers. What this must look like to him. What this was.

Twelve days for them.

Reid turned away and Emily followed, paused. Her breath hitched, and she held a hand down to her friends. Saying goodbye. Twelve days for them. Doubling the time they'd spent here.

Half a year for the others. Another six months.

He tried to cry out but his voice was gone, torn away with his screams. Reid didn't even hesitate as he vanished into the trees. He knew, he must have known how long it would be before they would see each other again.

He was refusing to say goodbye.

He left and didn't say goodbye.

Hotch drifted. Alone. Determined. He wasn't going to let Reid destroy himself over this.

Love was a much more powerful motivator.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Reid went home and said nothing.

Garcia watched him walk into the house with wide eyes, but she pulled away from the expression he was still wearing. He should have consoled her. He should have pulled her close and held her tight and told her that the people they loved were alive and coming home.

But he didn't.

He left Emily to do that because that would involve joy and relief, and he couldn't feel either of them at the moment. He needed to be angry, because anger was the only way he could do this. He would save Aaron with love, yes.

But he would save himself with hate.

He went to his room and the women let him go. He found his phone. Dialled a number he knew from memory, even though he'd deleted it out of the device in an attempt to put that part of his life behind him.

"Dr. Reid," Strauss greeted him, her voice shocked and wary. "It's early. How can I help you?"

Emily would knock tentatively on his door an hour later and poke her head in, biting at her lip. He'd still be sitting there, phone on his lap, staring at the wall.

"Spence?" she asked quietly.

He looked up at her and smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. He didn't need her fighting him on this. She frowned. He guessed maybe it wasn't as reassuring as he had hoped.

"I'm coming back," he said simply.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

They were quiet when their friends left. There didn't seem to be much left to say.

The raven and the kingfisher vanished. Hotch knew they were going to pay their respects to their fallen. Eventually, the swallows left too. Leaving him alone.

Gideon.

Hotch didn't know what to do. He should have gone to check, should have pulled himself together and gone into the woods himself, found the body of one of his oldest friend and co-worker. But every movement sent spasms of pain through his body, and it was all he could do to stay afloat, barely strong enough to stop his beak from dipping into the cool water.

He could hear voices from infinitely far away. He couldn't focus on them.

Suddenly the lake boiled under him and he jerked up, wings flapping in a useless attempt to lift himself out of the scalding liquid.

Stephen stood on the shoreline and his face was a mask of rage. The water heaved by his feet. Hotch tried to swim away, the water dragging him back and pushing him towards the shore. Heart hammering in his throat, he ignored the pain and spun to face the infuriated mage, spreading his wings wide and baring his beak in a warning hiss.

"But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ," Stephen murmured in a voice that carried despite the low tone and turned Hotch's blood to ice. "Or did you not realize that I knew you for a serpent the moment you touched him?"

 _"Your father or Spencer?"_ Hotch asked furiously, arching his neck back. He didn't know if the man could hear him. Didn't care. All he could see was Gideon laying alone in the woods and this man wrapping himself around Reid like a creeping vine, voracious and unstoppable.

 _"Hotch?"_ JJ called from somewhere, her voice sharp with confusion. _"Who are you talking to?"_

"Don't talk of him so familiarly!" snarled Stephen, stepping forward. Where his foot touched the water, it steamed. Hotch felt his feet brush the stones. He braced himself. His claws slid on the smooth surfaces, slipped, caught. He held on grimly, keeping a wingspan of space between them. "You, who'd draw him into mediocrity alongside you! I should have destroyed you from the beginning, before you spread your poison!"

He knew about Gideon, Hotch could see it. He didn't know if it was grief that caused this rage, or if it was the knowledge that if Gideon had died, then Spencer knew him for what he was. The bitter frustration of a child deprived of a favoured toy.

 _"You killed Jason Gideon, not me. Not Spencer. You! How does it feel to be responsible for the death of the only man who could ever love you?"_ This was dangerous. Hotch knew he was dangerously close to pushing the mage over the edge, that he was in more danger now than he had ever been, but it was like everything he'd tried to hold back was finally spilling over, bubbling out of him as a vicious torrent of words.

 _"Aaron, stop!"_ Rossi.

 _"Ah, shit. The mage, it's the mage. JJ, stay back."_ Will. His focus on JJ. As it should be. Keeping her safe, just like he should have protected Reid.

Stephen reeled and Hotch sealed his fate, finding his feet on the smooth shoreline and standing on legs that suddenly supported his weight, bolstered by the rush of bitter satisfaction it brought him to strike back. _"And now you'll be alone forever, because Spencer could never love someone as foul as you!"_

The blow came as a rush of air that crackled and burned and Hotch remembered the explosion and how the air had turned dry and choking, even as the flames danced harmlessly around them. Hotch shrieked as his feathers curled in the heat, singed.

Stephen shouted with him and the attack lessened; fast, feathered forms diving furiously at the man's face and raking unprotected skin with needle-tipped talons. JJ and Will flew in tandem, wingtips almost touching, leaving long, thin scratches along his arms and neck. Morgan clattered about his hands, deadly beak and claws slashing at the fingers that tried to weave the magic that would throw them away.

Rossi went for the face and he was relentless. His stabbing beak made contact again and again and there was blood.

A blur of wind and Hotch burst from the water as his smaller friends were scattered. Rossi tried to fly against the wind. Stephen struck him with rancorous strength, and the kingfisher tumbled in a flurry of blue and brown feathers. He hit the rocks and stilled.

Stephen raised his foot and moved to bring it down on his friend's unprotected body.

Hotch attacked, driving him away.

He'd been wrong to believe that just because he was trapped as a bird, he'd become weak. Heavy blows with great wings landed and Stephen fell back.

Stephen had been foolish to allow him this powerful form.

He stopped, keeping himself between the mage and his silent friend, wings still open in the promise of violence. Stephen eased himself from the ground, rivulets of blood trickling down his face and arms, the skin pale beneath. There was a cautious peace between them for a moment, broken only by their heaving breaths and soft chirps of a worried bird behind him.

"You seem so sure of him," Stephen said quietly, eventually, when the silence stretched thin. "It works both ways now, Hotchner. He knows the conditions of the spell, so it encompasses him as well. If he betrays you, you'll die as surely as if he cut your pretty neck."

 _"He could never betray me. There is nothing he could do that I would find unforgivable."_

Stephen smiled coldly. "We shall see."

He turned and left, walking towards where Hotch had last seen Gideon. Hotch thought of following him. Of observing what he planned.

 _"Aaron."_ JJ's voice.

He turned and his stomach plummeted. Rossi lay on the ground where he had fallen. Not moving. Not breathing.

His wings lay folded on the stones, curled around his tiny form. Feathers that seemed even more jewel-like for their inertness, as though he was a painting of a kingfisher instead of a living creature. In all of his life, David Rossi had never been this still.

 _"We can't die, right?"_ Morgan now, hopping along the ground. One wing trailed limply, the feathers rucked and torn. _"We heal. He'll heal. Won't he?"_

Hotch didn't answer. His voice was gone. He stared numbly at his friend, his closest friend.

 _"Gideon, when he… passed on… he turned human once more."_ Will. His voice a soothing tenor as he pressed close to the violently shaking JJ. _"David would be the same. He's stunned, he'll heal. Aaron was hurt worse than this when he changed outside the lake, and he recovered."_

Did he? Hotch couldn't tell. He still felt raw, bleeding. As though someone had taken a knife inside him and carved him hollow. He couldn't tell how much of it was a physical hurt and how much was his mind.

Oddly, JJ's sob sounded in their minds as though she'd spoken. Their connection was getting stronger. It still felt empty, with two gone. Silenced. _"He's not breathing."_

A soft breeze ruffled blue feathers. Hotch settled down onto his belly on the stones and lowered his bill to press gently against the smaller bird's chest. Waiting for a heartbeat that wasn't there. The skin stood silent beneath him. Waiting.

 _"He will,"_ Will promised them, eternally optimistic. _"Just wait."_

They did.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

He threw himself back into his recertification with a single-minded determination that Morgan wouldn't have believed possible.

He did the same with his job. Almost. He kept himself distant from the faces around him, the new faces. He didn't look at the wall with his friends on it. He didn't tell anyone about the lake, or about his pain, and he waited.

He didn't return to the sixth floor, or the BAU, not yet. He was a field agent again, but he wouldn't sit at those desks again until he earned his team back. Emily still worked up there, with her own team now. A promotion that must have burned for her to accept. He knew she'd step aside in a moment once Rossi and Hotch returned.

And every night Garcia picked up Henry, and Reid was late home.

He had to practise. He had to know he was ready.

He stayed at the firing range until his ears rang even under their protective coverings, and even the attendants there began to look at him strangely. He ignored them. They wouldn't meet his gaze if he returned their regard anyway; they knew his story.

 _"He was the BAU's pet genius."_

 _"That's right… his whole team. Imagine that."_

 _"I wouldn't have come back."_

He ignored them. They had no idea. Instead, he focused on the target and the memory of a voice in his ears, the ghost of a hand on his hip. Adjusting his posture.

 _"Relax your weight evenly on both feet,"_ the memory of Hotch instructed. _"Shoulders forward of the hips. That's it."_

Sometimes Emily came and watched him, or practised herself. She always left before he did. Other than noting her presence, he ignored her, too.

Three thousand, six hundred and ninety-six hours before the endgame.

He had to be ready.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Hotch only left his side to go to the lake when he needed to. Three times. Three times he left. Three absences where he returned and the kingfisher still lay ruined. Two sunsets in a world devoid of both Jason Gideon and David Rossi.

It was too much.

He came back as a human after the second sunset and cupped the small form in his hands. It barely filled his palm, impossibly frail. The grief was too much. There was no way he could associate this minute body with his brash, exuberant friend.

"He's not coming back, is he?" JJ asked finally, human. Will and Morgan huddled together, birds still, heads lowered. She didn't cry. It still didn't feel real.

Gideon's death felt more real, and Hotch hadn't even seen his body. It was gone. Nothing remained but the barest indentation in the loam where it had lain. Hotch vowed one day to find where Stephen had taken it. To bury him properly. He owed his friend that much.

He owed this friend too much.

A single finger stroking across the delicate webbing of his feathers. There wasn't enough of him. He wasn't ready to give up yet. The kingfisher still looked as pristine as the day he had fallen, as though no time at all had passed. Death hadn't touched him with its rotting finger yet. There was hope.

He settled back into place and held the bird close. Kept waiting.

It wasn't like there was much else to do there but wait.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

"I don't dream about birds anymore," Henry said one morning, watching Reid with narrowed eyes. There was something unnerving in the child's eyes, as though he was being picked apart and studied and found lacking. "And the goshawk hasn't come back. Did something happen to them? Something bad?"

Reid paused with the mug against his mouth. The steam burned his lip, and he pulled it away quickly. "I don't know," he said carefully, unsure of if he'd given himself away with his hesitation.

They hadn't told Henry. They couldn't. There was too much time between the now and the then. Too much time when something could go horribly wrong.

Three thousand, three hundred and sixty hours to go.

Henry might not dream anymore, but Reid did.

Every night he fell asleep with the ghost of a memory on his lips, and he dreamed of a whispered, _'I love you.'_

He hoped it wasn't the last one he got.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

He had the idea on the sixth day. Their final hope. After this, no more. They'd grieve him properly.

The others watched him with hopelessness in their eyes as he stepped into the water and waded in until it lapped around his waist, cool and encompassing. It had become a constant to him now. The lake took pain away. It healed him.

It could heal his friend.

He cupped his hands and lowered the slight form into the water, letting the liquid pool through his fingers and darken the bright feathers. The kingfisher shifted slightly with the current, nudging against his fingers.

He thought for a wild moment of taking his hands away and letting the lake take him, draw him down into the dark depths. Maybe he'd return. Maybe he wouldn't.

Maybe the lake would take them all.

Then the moon caught the surface of the lake and his skin, and he felt it pull him in. His hands slipped, became long primaries that failed their grip. The kingfisher dipped into the water and vanished.

Gone.

Hotch cried out with a throat that was no longer human and dived down after him, vaguely aware of his friends calling out behind him.

 _"Dave! Dave, no!"_

He knew now what Reid had felt when he stood at the empty grave and begged for him not to be dead.

He knew what it was like to offer everything for another chance, just one last chance. _Stop being dead. Please._ He didn't know how Reid had stayed sane through it, because this was the kind of pain that tore you from your mind and sent you hurtling into the dark.

He wasn't ready.

His bill brushed the soft mud at the bottom of the lake and sent swirls of dirt and algae dancing around him, obscuring his view. His lungs burned. He couldn't see him, couldn't see anything.

Gone.

He burst from the lake and trumpeted his fury and grief, water cascading around him, the surface of the lake shattered by his pain. Spencer would return and find them one less, Aaron's fault. His fault again. Always his fault. Elle and Gideon and now Rossi.

Something touched his back, feather-light. He spun, hissing.

Water dripped from his matted hair, his eyes dark and stunned looking. Shaking his head like a wet dog, his clothes hung loosely from his form. Their eyes met and he grinned shakily. Human. Alive.

"Bit dramatic, aren't you?" David Rossi spluttered, and Hotch almost broke with the relief of it.

JJ and Morgan dipped around his head, both making rough noises of joy. Hotch stayed silent as they welcomed their friend home.

He closed the distance between them and lay his head against his friend's chest, listening to his heartbeat. Making sure it was really there. Letting the shock of the loss he'd battled not so long ago fade into a distant, horrifying memory. Rossi seemed stunned by the show of affection. He touched Hotch's wing gently, cautiously.

"I'm okay, Aaron," he said quietly, and his face was more serious than Hotch had seen it in a long time.

 _"You're okay,"_ Hotch repeated, like a promise.

Still waiting. But still together.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Reid had an idea.

It took him longer than it would have if Garcia had still been their IT Wizard, but he managed it.

He checked the number twice and then dialled it. Held his breath as it rang. Ran over the practised speech he'd planned in his head. It needed to be perfect.

"Hello?" She sounded tired. Worn. He knew the feeling.

"Jessica?" he said softly. "It's Spencer Reid. How are you?"

One thousand, four hundred and sixty-four hours.

It needed to be perfect.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

They let days pass before they spoke of it again. Hotch was content to never mention it, ever. Rossi wasn't so kind.

"Thank you," he said stiffly, sitting next to him one night and looking up at the moon. "For what you did for me. Saving me."

"You'd have healed eventually without me nearly drowning you."

Rossi shrugged. "We don't know that." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Actually, we don't know if we can drown either. I was under there a while, and I didn't have the benefit of being a swan at the time. How long can swans hold their breaths?"

Hotch laughed despite himself. "I think you need Reid for that question." They fell quiet at the mention of the man, his absence still haunting even with the promise of his arrival on the horizon. So close now. Mere days.

"We're magically transformed into birds every day," Rossi began, sounding incredulous. "But I still think he's the oddest one out of us. He bloody would know, too. He probably read a book on swans when he was two and can still recall it word for word. Christ. And this is the guy we're relying on for a triumphant rescue!"

Hotch laughed until his sides hurt, not because it was funny, but because he finally had reason to.

They were going home. Two more sunsets and they were going home. To Jack. To Henry. To _Reid_.

"There's no one else I'd rather be rescued by," he said loyally, when the laughing subsided enough that he could breathe again.

Rossi rolled his eyes. "Oh, I could think of perhaps one or two ladies who…" Hotch elbowed him. "But of course, they wouldn't be anywhere near as clever."

This was hope.

He'd forgotten.

He closed his eyes and revelled in it. "No. No they wouldn't be."

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Twenty-one hours.

Reid stared at the roof and tried to remember how to breathe. So close.

So close.

He rolled over in the bed and let his arm fall across the empty space, imagined it filled. It would be soon. He was coming home.

 _See you soon, Aaron_ , he promised the space, and closed his eyes.

He fell asleep and he didn't dream.

 _I love you._

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

A final flight. His last day with wings.

He'd be sorry to lose them, almost. There was a freedom to soaring through the sky that he'd never find again.

He thought of Reid and the future they had together with Jack, with his son, and realized that he didn't really mind.

 _"Want me to come?"_ asked Rossi, opening his small wings, and Hotch shook his head. This was something he had to do alone. Rossi shrugged, not really minding. Will and JJ chased each other through the canopy of the woods, enjoying their own last day as swallows. Morgan was a dark dot on the sky above. _"Alright. I want to see if I can beat my diving record, one last time_ , _"_ Rossi said with a laugh, before taking off and skimming effortlessly over the water.

Hotch beat his wings slowly and felt the air grip and lift him.

His final flight.

It felt like a beginning.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Reid tightened his tie and swallowed around the lump that was trying to choke him. Garcia busied around him, straightening his suit and fussing endlessly. He didn't mind. He liked that she was close. It all felt a little too much; she grounded him.

Emily appeared and touched his arm. She was wearing her gun.

"Do you want me to come?" he asked her, voice scratchy and hoarse around his dry throat. She smirked and passed him a bottle of water.

"I'll be fine. I'm not even going in – he's meeting me at the end of the path. Besides, it's bad luck."

Garcia laughed. "They're not getting married. They're just making solemn vows to always be there to… oh. Spencer, you do realize that you're basically getting married, right?"

Reid swayed and Emily caught his elbow. "Woah, don't overwhelm him," she said with a snort. There was a relief in her eyes that niggled into his conscience like a burrowing worm. She believed all his thoughts of revenge were behind him, passed over for the excitement of the reunion ahead.

They weren't. He smiled reassuringly at her, knowing that if he moved ever so slightly forward she'd see the bulge of his gun under the tailored shape of his suit jacket, barely hidden by his arm. But she wasn't looking for it, so she didn't see.

Whatever happened, he was ready.

Murmuring voices outside and he heard Henry shriek in excitement. Theirs wasn't the only reunion tonight. Reid stood and walked over to the door, pulled it open.

Jack looked up at him from behind his blonde bangs, and smiled shyly. "Hi, Spence," he said quietly, one hand on Henry's shoulder. Henry beamed at seeing his friend again. Jessica walked up behind them; the last twelve months had aged her beyond her years. She still smiled to see him.

"Glad you could come," he told her seriously.

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," she laughed, before wrinkling her nose. She looked like Jack when she did that. "Not that I know what this is, really."

Garcia answered before he could, and better than he could ever have. Emily slipped out of the room while they talked, shooting him one last glance as she went. He sucked in a sharp breath. This was it.

"It's family," Garcia said firmly, reaching out and pulling Jack into a hug.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Hotch landed on the far side of the lake, the burn of his shoulder muscles welcome. He folded his wings for what he knew would be the last time and whispered goodbye to the winds that had carried him.

He turned to glide smoothly back across to the shoreline where the feather was carefully tucked in his vest, and that was when the lake claimed the price of Rossi's life.

He was dragged under without even having time to cry out, the water closing around him, liquid filling his lungs and his eyes and sealing him in as resolutely as if they were walls instead of water. No matter how much he thrashed, he sank further yet, his lungs screaming and his wings useless.

 _"Dave!"_ he called, to silence. _"Morgan! Help! JJ!"_

No one answered.

He stopped sinking, the water forming a ball of firm resistance around him that refused to relinquish its hold no matter how much he battered his wings and bill against it.

 _"I'd help you, Hotchner,"_ Stephen's voice whispered around him as spots danced in front of his eyes. Numbly, he thought that he was going to find out now if they could drown or not. So close. So close to salvation, and now this. _"But I'm afraid I'm terribly busy."_

It wasn't fair. _"You bastard,"_ he sent weakly, feeling himself slump to the bottom of the ball that held him. He tried to breathe, inhaled water, spluttered. Bubbles filled his vision, flurried around him.

 _"I'll come get you after, I won't let you die. Not yet anyway. Not like this,"_ Stephen said, laughing coldly. _"But first, I have a date."_

A date. No…

 _Spencer._

Hotch screamed soundlessly, but there was no one to hear him. He was truly alone.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

 _Hotch is late. Six fucking months to prepare and he's late._ Emily paced next to the car, hand held to her mouth as she fought the desire to bite her nails, her nerves ticking at a million miles an hour as she silently fumed. Cursed or not, he was picking a really bad time to be late.

Reid's face haunted her, the cold anger that had yet to fade even after months, battling with the longing. There had been hope in it tonight, yes, but she knew that the anger was still there, barely hidden underneath the thin layer of tonight's festivities. If they ever actually happened.

If Aaron ever bothered to show up, anyway. She supposed that swans didn't exactly wear watches, so she probably should have cut him a little slack.

Someone stepped out of the tree-line, appearing as suddenly as if he'd materialized from thin air. Technically, he had, the walls of the prison where her friends were being kept hiding him.

"Thank god," she gasped as Hotch paused and squinted against the light from her blazing headlights. He was just as filthy as she remembered. It was going to be a stretch to get him home and cleaned up before they planned to start streaming the footage. "Come on, we're so late!"

Hotch grinned at her and the look was alien enough that she paused. Hotch wasn't a grinner, he'd never been a grinner.

"Not going to enjoy the moment at least?" he said with a nervous chuckle, and she relaxed. He was in the real world for the first time in a year, of course he was a little out of sorts. She was being paranoid.

"I'll enjoy it when this is just a horrible memory," she assured him, opening the car door and gesturing for him to get in.

He looked at her with an inscrutable expression. "I bet you will," he said cryptically.

She frowned slightly, but then he was in the car and time was still ticking, and she bolted for the driver's side.

They were going to need so much therapy after this.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

 _"Did Hotch leave already?"_ JJ hopped onto the branch by the path and frowned down at it. There was no sign of their friend. Morgan landed next to her and ruffled his wings.

 _"Guess he must have,"_ he said warily. _"Did he say anything to you, Rossi?"_

Dave stared at the end of the path and tried to push back the growing feeling of, 'something has gone really fucking wrong.' He didn't answer. He couldn't yet. He hadn't decided.

 _"Perhaps he was nervous enough that he forgot,"_ Will suggested. _"I was so nervous when I married JJ that I forgot the rings."_

 _"Did you?"_ JJ looked about as shocked as a bird could. _"I didn't know that."_

 _"Twice, cher,"_ Will said glumly. _"Hotch went back to get them."_

Rossi shook his feathers out, trying to shed the worry along with the water from his diving. They couldn't be there tonight, that was what was bothering him. He was just grumpy because they were stuck here and couldn't be a part of it.

After all, Gideon had only left one feather.

It was almost a knee-jerk reaction, to glance down at the bush where Hotch's vest had lain.

Still laid. A dark shadow against the earth. Untouched.

His blood ran cold and he dived from the tree, hitting the ground with uncharacteristic force. The others followed, startled by his clumsiness.

He pushed the vest open, struggling slightly with the weight.

The feather shifted, caught by the breeze, and he caught it with a quick talon. The others stared.

 _"He hasn't left,"_ Rossi said in the building silence. _"Something's gone wrong. He's still here."_

 _"I'll go to the cabin."_ Morgan vanished in a clatter of heavy wings. Will paused, then followed.

 _"He can't go alone – we'll be back, Jennifer."_

JJ stayed, staring at him with dark eyes. _"We should check the woods. Maybe he fell."_

Rossi turned his head to agree, and the smooth dark surface of the lake loomed in front of them. He stared at it. Not a ripple marred the mirror-like surface. It was pitch-black.

None of them had changed back. He looked up at the moon, the waning crescent. The same as when they'd first been trapped here.

It wasn't reflected on the lake.

 _"The lake!"_ he hissed, and took to the air. Held his breath and paused in the air, searching the surface. He couldn't see a thing.

He'd have to do it the hard way.

He plunged into the depths, his heart hammering. Cutting through the water like a sleek-knife, searching.

 _"We're not giving in, you sick fuck!"_ he snarled, just in case Stephen was listening. _"Hotshot, you get the hell out here right now! You have somewhere to be, damnit!"_

Hotch had never taken shit lying down before.

Right now would be a really bad time for him to start.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Reid pressed his head against the cool glass of the bathroom mirror and focused really hard on not throwing up. There was a hum of voices outside. None of them knew what was in store. Not yet.

Between Emily's contacts through her mother and Garcia once she'd gotten into the spirit of things, there were far too many people out there. Almost all of them he knew. Almost.

Some of them he didn't, but a quick glance at them was enough to tell him who they were. Morgan's family. Rossi's. He wasn't the only one getting back something he'd lost tonight.

JJ's mother had taken one look at his suit and burst into tears. He'd been shocked and concerned. Her father just watched him and smiled sadly.

"Thought you'd have at least warned us if you were getting hitched, son," he'd said quietly, and Reid had quickly reassessed his opinion of the quiet looking couple. JJ got her observation skills from someone, after all.

He was the man in charge of their grandson, so he hadn't been overly surprised by their warmth towards him.

But it wasn't until that moment that he realized they thought of him as family. It was sobering. He wondered if they'd forgive him for keeping their daughter's survival from them. He doubted it. At least JJ would never keep him from Henry, even if her parents hated him.

He stepped out of the bathroom and made his way back to the reception room, pausing on the threshold and skimming his gaze around. The whole place oozed with the careful decorative touch of Emily Prentiss, subtle blooms of white flowers in the corners and delicate strings of lights overhead casting uneven shadows onto the tables. Garcia had rigged cameras up, small and discreet, around the small stage where he'd stand when Aaron arrived. It was unbearably dramatic. He swallowed hard again, his stomach roiling.

Almost as dramatic as kidnapping a man and turning him into a swan. Reid supposed nothing less than dramatic would do to undo this.

Wide windows behind the stage filtered the weak moonlight through, and he saw Emily slipping into the room from a side door.

Aaron was here. Here, in this building.

His fear vanished.

He stepped up to the stage and all eyes turned to him. He could see Henry bouncing in his seat, barely held back by his grandfather's steady hand, Garcia already crying, laptop on the table in front of her, and being soothed by a confused looking Kevin. Jessica and Jack, smiling. Morgan's mom waved at him. One of his sisters winked. None of them knew what was coming. He cleared his throat.

It was time.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

He didn't drown.

He floated in that ball for an eternity, cut off from all sensation but the cold. In that time, he thought of many things.

Mostly he thought of Reid. And he was sorry.

Sorry he couldn't make it. Sorry he'd failed him again. Sorry to make him grieve twice over.

He closed his eyes right before the ball surrounding him shuddered from an impact.

He opened them and righted himself, moving oddly in the strangely compressed liquid. A blur dove past, spinning and striking the ball with his beak. The water swayed with the impact. Something buzzed in Hotch's head, like a faraway voice calling his name.

The ball shuddered again, and gave way. Suddenly Hotch could move again.

 _"You don't get to give up, Aaron! Move!"_ Rossi dived at him now, and Hotch kicked towards the faint light off the surface, away from that murderously stabbing beak.

His first breath of air almost choked him.

Then Rossi was there and he didn't have time to catch his breath properly, or revel in his returned freedom. There was a feather grasped in his claws and he hovered in front of Hotch, wings beating furiously. _"You need to go – you're running out of time!"_

Hotch glanced up at the moon. He didn't know if he could be back before morning hit…

Spencer. Stephen.

 _"Stephen's gone after Spencer,"_ he gasped, the memory striking him and sending him reeling. _"I won't get there in time."_

 _"Well, you fucking won't if you float there like a stunned duck! Fly!"_

Hotch caught the feather as it tumbled from Rossi's talons and spun around, opened his wings.

He _would_ get there in time.

He wasn't going to fail him again.

 _Not ever again._

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

"One year ago today we said goodbye to five of the bravest, strongest people I have ever had the honour of knowing. Every one of us here was marked by that day, and we grieved together."

Reid paused and looked around the room. Every eye was on him. Some were teary. He opened his mouth to continue speaking, the carefully prepared speech ready to tumble from his lips.

The door opened and Aaron walked in.

There was a low rustling sound as heads swivelled towards the door. Gasps. Someone stood up. Another person cried out.

Aaron only had eyes for him and later, Reid would think that strange, because Jack screamed and Aaron didn't even blink.

In the silence, his footsteps as he crossed the hall were deafening. Reid stared at him, frozen, struck by the long-awaited moment, the joy and the pain of it. This was his second chance. They weren't supposed to have a second chance, but they were, and it began now.

Aaron stepped up onto the stage and suddenly the dazed cries stilled as people noted the lack of shock on his face, and Aaron's suit. Reid glanced around, saw Jessica holding Jack's shoulder and looking ill.

This wasn't right. He was supposed to tell them first, then Aaron comes out. He was supposed to warm them. Warn Jack.

He'd wanted Jack up here with him, not down there looking scared and sick and frozen with astonishment.

His eyes met Emily's and she was frowning too.

"I couldn't wait," Aaron said roughly, grabbing his hand, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. Pain, hidden there. "Make the vow, Spencer. Now."

"Are you okay?" Reid murmured, aware of the growing tension in the room and unsure of his footing anymore. He gripped Aaron's hand tightly, running his fingers over the clammy skin. He could feel abrasive ridges under his fingertips, as though from healing abrasions, but when he looked down the skin was clear and unmarred. Perfect.

"Of course," Aaron said with a wide smile, leaning in towards him as though going to kiss him. "How could I not be? But hurry, he knows I'm gone. He's hurting me through the curse."

Reid nodded, his heart beating a tattoo against his chest, stepping back and towards the microphone again. He pushed away the uncertainty. He needed to do this, to bring them home. All of them.

"I have an announcement to make, several of them in fact," he began. He looked at JJ's mom. She was standing and unlike everyone else, she didn't look mad.

She looked almost overwhelmed with hope. He smiled at her and her eyes widened.

Time for them to come home.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

He broke from the world they'd been trapped in, pushing through the viscous barrier that had trapped them with ease, and found himself on the outskirts of DC.

It was oddly jarring and it struck him seconds later that he didn't even know where to go. He didn't know where they were, where Reid was, and time was ticking away.

The feather tickled his beak and he shook his head, riding the air currents and turning his head back and forth, hopelessness hitting him. The whole of DC, and they could be anywhere. He wasn't going to make it.

 _Giving up so easily… how pathetic,_ snarled a voice in the back of his mind that sounded remarkably like Rossi. He shoved it back angrily and closed his eyes, thinking.

A pull. The slight tug against… something.

Something drawing him west. A link of some kind.

 _To Reid?_ He didn't think so. He'd never felt any connection like that before.

Gideon had managed to find Stephen wherever he went. _To Stephen_.

Hotch hissed and plunged through the air with powerful sweeps of his wings.

 _Hold on, Reid. I'm on my way._

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

"One year ago today, Aaron Hotchner was among those taken from us. Today, he comes back to us. Alive. A father. A friend. And so much more."

Reid turned and dropped to his knee and the room stayed silent. No one spoke, or moved, not a single rustle. He could see the blinking of the camera in the corner of his eye. Aaron watched him, face impassive but eyes wild with some emotion he couldn't place.

"I made a promise that if you were returned to me, somehow, that I would prove to you how much I love you," Reid said to him, and only him, ignoring the others and the camera and speaking only to the man he'd loved and lost, and had returned to him. "And somehow you came back, alive and everything I had ever dreamed of. And so I make that promise again, to a person this time and not a headstone…" He paused and reached into his pocket, pulled out the ring he'd kept there. Opened it.

Cheesy. But dramatic.

Aaron swallowed hard.

 _So close._

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

The building loomed ahead and Hotch dove.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

"… I make the promise that I will love and cherish you until the moment that I draw my final breath…"

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

People cried out as he swooped over their heads, almost crashing into the closed doors. He turned on a dime and skimmed the wall, searching for an entrance.

Swept out away from the wall again, around the corner of the building and found a window.

Spencer. Kneeling in front of… himself. No, not himself. _Stephen._

 _Don't!_ Hotch screamed wordlessly as Reid opened his mouth.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

"… And that this vow I make to you today will always remain unbroken. Aaron Hotchner, will you marry me?" He stuttered over the last few lines. Aaron took the ring without meeting his gaze.

Aaron laughed oddly, and nodded. "Yes," he said quietly, and there was a surge of movement and startled yelps behind them. Reid stood, the moment oddly anti-climactic. He'd almost expected light and sparks and magic.

Aaron moved and pulled him in by his suit jacket, startling him out of his reverie, pulling their mouths together.

As soon as their lips touched, Reid knew it was wrong.

He pulled away with a shout right as the window overhead shattered and showered glass upon them.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

He had no choice.

Hotch dove at the window and closed his eyes, hoping he was in time.

Seconds before he hit the clear surface, he felt it. _Too late._

He hit the window as something inside him tore open and sent him screaming to the ground.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Reid staggered back as the window rained down on them, glass in his hair and clothes, shoving the man trying to kiss him off. People were screaming, surging back. Emily ran forward, one of the few who did, her weapon drawn and arm held up to protect her eyes from falling glass. Anderson was steps behind her, his eyes wide and shocked.

"Reid, look out!" he shouted, and Reid turned and was almost struck by a white avalanche of feathers crashing into the room.

The swan corrected his flight before hitting the ground and swept back into the air, to the shock of everyone in the room. People stared. Henry stood and shouted something fierce, his face alight.

The swan cried out as it took back to the air, and Reid caught its gaze for a single second, and _knew_ what he'd done.

The call was long and low and like nothing he'd ever heard from a swan's throat before. A song.

The verse mocked him one last time. _"There, she poured out her words of grief, tearfully, in faint tones, in harmony with sadness, just as the swan sings once, in dying, its own funeral song."_

The swan vanished with a frantic clap of wings, out the window and into the distance and Reid knew he was going back to the lake. Fleeing, from him, and this betrayal.

He pulled his weapon and spun on the imposter. Someone shouted something close to his ear and it sounded horribly like Jack.

The imposter staggered up and smiled again, and Reid wondered how he'd been fooled because that wasn't Hotch's smile at all. It was a shark smile. Hungry and cold and victorious.

Stephen smiled coldly at him and Reid held the gun steady, aiming the bullet between his eyes, and he could have had his revenge right there. His finger slid to the trigger. He wanted this. For the first time in his life, Spencer Reid wanted to pull the trigger.

But the man wore Aaron's skin and everyone Reid loved was there watching, except for Aaron himself who was somewhere _(dying)_ , needing him.

He turned and ran, and Stephen's laughter followed him.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

He didn't remember the flight home.

All he remembered was pain and Reid's shocked eyes staring at him from a ring of broken glass and promises.

He broke through the barrier and the lake was in front of him, his friends suddenly in his head again, and he fell.

He fell.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Rossi felt Hotch coming before the others did.

 _"What the hell…"_ he murmured, as the swan dove into view, plummeting gracefully towards the lake.

 _"Hotch?"_ JJ called. _"What happened? Where's Reid?"_

This was the point in the dive when they would pull up. Tilt their wings and skim the ground gently, before coming to a landing.

The swan curved in mid-air, his body caught in the fall, but he didn't correct himself to land. His wings went limp, torn open by the wind. He was a ragdoll thrown by an uncaring hand, lifeless and broken.

He was falling.

 _"I don't think he made it,"_ Morgan gasped, as they leapt as one into the air to catch their friend.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Reid made it to the lake in time to see the swan fall, leaving his car idling on the roadside as he plunged through the barrier. It was the illusion of beauty again, moonlight catching the snowy wings as they opened in a parody of flight.

Reid ran but he wasn't going to make it, and the swan song played over and over in his mind like the promise of further grief to come. Dark shadows swooped up to their friend, tried to slow his fall.

His heart hammered and his muscles burned but he didn't stop running.

He could stop this. He could fix this.

He only had to reach him in time.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

They tried to slow his fall, but he was bigger than all of them and they were almost dragged down with him. His wings moved sluggishly, still conscious, trying to control his fall.

They caught, he slowed, and they almost cheered.

He was pulled out of their grip by his own weak wingbeats and they sent him hurtling towards the ground.

None of them were quick enough to catch him again as he struck the shallows with a dull splash and tumbled helplessly onto the rocky shoreline.

None of them were quick enough.

And he lay motionless, great wings finally silent.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

The swan crumpled to the ground at his feet and Reid stared at it, uncomprehending.

He fell to his knees for the second time that night, but there was no hope in his heart anymore. The swan was lighter than expected when he picked it up and pulled it close.

Warm. He was warm still. A heart beat steadily against Reid's palm as he laid it against the bird's breast.

"I made the vow for you," he said desperately. He needed him to understand. "It was for you, Aaron. Only for you. I didn't betray you."

The swan opened his eyes and looked at him and Reid could almost hear the silent, _I know,_ in that gaze. The other birds gathered around, small feet making soft noises on the stones.

"I love you," Reid said, because he needed to say it in case this was it. "I think I always have. Please, don't leave me again. You said you wouldn't." He was begging. Desperate. He couldn't do this again.

The swan closed its eyes, nodded weakly, and for a moment Reid's heart soared with hope because _of course_ Aaron wouldn't leave him, not again. He'd never hurt him like that.

The heart against Reid's palm faltered.

And stopped.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Death approached quickly and he felt it descend upon him.

 _"Not a beginning after all,"_ he thought to himself as he sunk into a blackness more complete than the lake could ever have been. _"An ending."_

It didn't hurt anymore.

"It was for you," Spencer begged him to understand, and he almost laughed because he didn't need to beg.

 _"I know,"_ he reassured him, before letting the darkness take him.

Aaron Hotchner was pulled close against the chest of the man he loved, and trapped in the broken body of a swan, he died.


	4. Ending

_Ending_

 **Thanks to my beta, Greeneyedconstellations!**

 **.**

 **.**

 _"Wie klag' ich's aus, das Sterbegefühl,_

 _Das auflösend durch die Glieder rinnt?_

 _Wie sing' ich's aus, das Werdegefühl,_

 _Das erlösend dich, o Geist, anweht?"_

 **Johann Chrysostomos Senn,** ** _Schwanengesang_**

 **.**

"How I complain about it, the feeling of death,

the dissolution that runs through the limbs?

How I sing about it, the feeling of becoming,

the salvation, oh spirit, that awaits you?"

 **Johann Chrysostomos Senn,** ** _Swan Song_**

 **.**

Aaron Hotchner died under the light of the moon that had betrayed him, and Spencer Reid considered following him. Fleetingly.

Then someone laughed and Reid changed his mind.

He wasn't done here yet.

He lowered the cooling body of the swan carefully to the ground and stood, trousers flapping wetly against his legs and the light breeze cutting straight through him. He savoured it. The cold meant he was still alive.

Then he turned and faced the man who'd destroyed everything.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Aaron fell from the sky and hit the ground with an inevitability that would haunt David Rossi for months to come.

He found himself human again, with his team at his side, and none of them treasured their freedom because Spencer Reid sat in front of them cradling their leader's body, and the cost was too high.

Someone laughed, Reid stood, and Rossi saw murder in his eyes.

He wasn't going to stop him.

He stepped back.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

JJ tried to run to Spence on legs that shook, but Will dragged her back and only then did she see Stephen approaching. Spence stood, and his face was a mask that JJ recognised from the files that used to cover her desk every morning.

"Stay the hell away from them!" she screamed at the mage, wrenching her arm out of Will's grasp and staggering forward. Stephen didn't even spare her a glance as he walked past and she couldn't move, illogically frozen even though her body burned with anger. Will made a low noise behind her, and she knew he was paralysed as well.

"I gave you nothing," Spencer spat at the man, and his fists clenched at his side, shaking with repressed anger and grief. "You know that. You know nothing that I said was for you!"

Stephen's expression twisted, almost inhuman, and JJ didn't think she'd ever be able to read about magic or fairy-tales again without seeing that face. "The betrayal is yours," he said. He smiled. "He died because of you. You're alone because of _you._ I don't think the intention behind the words really matters in the end, does it? Just the… result."

Reid faltered, and his expression cleared. She felt relief for a moment. He was still thinking, still himself. He could get them out of this, all of them.

"Then take me," Reid said quietly, and her hope shattered. "My life for his."

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

He couldn't move and Jennifer fought him, dragged her arm out of his grip and ran forward into danger. Ran towards Spencer and the man capable of things they couldn't even possibly imagine.

The mage turned his head slightly and his eyes skimmed over Jen, and Will almost threw up with the surge of protective fury that burned in him. _Don't even look at her, you son of a bitch!_ He tried to scream it but his voice was gone, taken by the spell that rooted them both to that cursed beach.

His only solace was that Jen was frozen too, unable to fling herself between Spencer and danger like he knew she would in a heartbeat. He knew that was what she was thinking, just as he knew Spencer wouldn't be leaving here tonight so long as Stephen still lived.

Because he knew what he'd do if it was Jen laying there lifeless. He wouldn't stop until the man who'd done it was dead by his hands.

"My life for his," Spencer said calmly, and Will understood completely. He knew Jen wouldn't.

She crumpled slightly in front of him, her blue eyes widening with fear and horror, and he wondered if any of them would survive this night. If two members of her team died here, a part of his wife would, too.

But they would be free. And they would have Henry. His one job, getting Henry's mama home to him.

His feet shifted on the cobbles. He could move again. He wavered, teetering between grabbing her and running from the waves of suppressed power radiating outwards from the mage, or sprinting forward and helping her teammate.

No. Not just her teammate.

The man who'd raised his son when he wasn't able. The man who'd taken in a boy who had lost everything, and still somehow managed to keep him smiling, keep him dreaming and loving. The Henry Will had seen that day was delighted with the birds, joyous with the kingfisher on his hand. Still able to be happy.

He owed Spencer everything.

"Gladly," Stephen responded, and Will decided.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Reid moved towards Stephen, and Morgan shuffled forward on his knees and lay a hand on the swan's creamy throat, hesitantly searching for some sign of life, some hope.

"Reid, get away from him!" he screamed, looking up and seeing his friend walking placidly to his death. "The fuck are you doing? Don't!"

It was like time had slowed, everything slightly blurred at the edges except for the sharp edged clarity of Reid's back as he walked away from them all.

"If you have me, if I belong to you, you'll let him live?" His voice so quiet that Morgan almost couldn't hear it. He tried to stand, to run forward, but he almost tripped over the swan, putting a quick hand down to steady himself and feeling it press against the soft chest of the great bird.

Stephen looked hungry, reaching out for Reid. The air around his hand pulsed. Morgan realized with a sick certainty that if that hand touched Reid, he'd die in front of them and none of them would be fast enough to stop him.

JJ, standing frozen with her mouth slack as though facing a nightmare, Rossi looking from Hotch's body to Reid with a dazed expression, as though uncertain of what was real and what was madness.

Will flew past and it was Stephen's hyper focus on Reid that gave him the opening, the two men going down in a flurry of limbs.

"Will!" JJ shrieked, and she was moving too, but Will was already up off the mage, lashing out with his foot, the heel impacting wetly against the mage's nose and throwing him back to the ground. He turned and wrapped his arm around Reid's chest, throwing him back. Reid fought him, but Will was stronger and recklessly determined.

"No one dies here," Will said firmly as Reid stumbled back over Hotch and hit the ground hard, eyes wide and stunned. Will turned back to face the mage, his own hands clenched into fists. "No one dies here, not anyone. You got that? You can't go through all of us."

Morgan straightened. "Damn right," he growled.

Stephen laughed wildly. "You think you can stop me?" His lips flecked with spittle and the whites of his eyes showing; for the first time he looked truly insane. Something popped in Morgan's ears as the pressure ramped up around them, the air suddenly thick and heavy with the scent of a storm.

He raised his hand and the skin on Morgan's arms began to sear faintly with the promise of pain.

A flicker of uncertainty in Will's eyes, and he glanced at JJ as though pleading silently for her to run. He'd turned them into birds in an instant; what could they do against him unarmed?

"Don't do this," Reid murmured. Morgan shot him a filthy glare, furious with the idea that Reid had been so happy to leave them. "Not for me, not now. I'm not worth it. JJ – Henry needs you. Just walk away, please."

"Shut up, Spence," JJ answered coldly, and took Will's hand.

Morgan reached for Reid, to pull him upright, to hold him close; he wasn't entirely sure of his plan except that he wasn't going to die without touching his friend one last time.

The air shattered with a gunshot and they all dropped as it tore the world apart.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Morgan reached for him and Reid considered ducking away from his hands and sprinting past them, but he already knew that plan had a low probability of actually working. Almost impossible. Maybe against one of them, maybe against two, but four of them?

And he didn't fancy finding out just how hard JJ could hit if he really riled her.

Instead, he locked eyes with Stephen and tried to convey with his expression to take pity on them, to let his friends live. They'd paid the price, Aaron was dead. They deserved their freedom.

He locked gazes with Stephen's cold, blue eyes and that was the moment the bullet slammed into the mage's skull and those eyes emptied forever.

Stephen Gideon fell for the last time and behind him, Emily Prentiss lowered her gun.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Her team, loosely clustered around a vivid splash of white against the dark cobbles that she didn't want to think too closely about. Reid on the ground, and by the furious looks Morgan kept shooting him, he'd probably just done something really stupid and dangerous.

Rossi turned his head slightly and saw her, and he nodded just once.

She aimed the gun and fired without hesitating, and the world around them imploded as the mage died, sending them all to the ground.

A scream behind her as the air folded in upon them, and she turned, still crouched, and felt someone small hurtle into her arms, shaking with fear.

When the air corrected itself the lake was still there, but the sky was familiar again and the sound of traffic hummed over the forest towards them. She relaxed her arms, and the figure slipped out. Blinked. Turned his head and saw the people clustered on the bank.

"Mama! Daddy!" screamed Henry, sprinting towards them. "Spence!"

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Stephen died and the first thing Reid heard was Henry's voice calling for his parents. When the boy leapt out from Emily's arms and ran towards them, he wasn't even shocked. If magic was real, why not miracles as well?

He looked down, blinking the aftereffects of the spell collapsing out of his eyes. The swan was still there.

Impossible.

Stephen was dead. The world they had been trapped in was gone. How could Aaron still be a swan, still be…?

A hand on his shoulder. He didn't need to look to know whose.

"Spencer…" Rossi said softly, his hand tightening. His voice wavered. Reid remembered numbly that he wasn't the only one here who loved Aaron. The crowd around them had dispersed, Will and JJ crying and hugging Henry to them as though they could never let him go. Reid didn't blame them. He didn't know how he was going to let him go either, now the time had come.

Morgan standing back, looking lost. Someone screamed. Garcia appeared like a wraith and wrapped around him, almost sending them both toppling to the ground. Reid couldn't focus on their happiness through the desperation crowding onto him.

One more step. One more step and he would have taken Stephen's hand and traded everything for Aaron.

Why couldn't the world have allowed him that final step?

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Reid's hand settled on the swan as though saying a final goodbye, and the motion was so oddly familiar that Rossi looked away.

And saw the moon.

"Wait," he said, his grip so tight on the man's shoulder under him that it must have been painful. "Wait!"

There was still hope.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Reid was vaguely aware that there were more people around then there had been. Emily took his hand for a moment, squeezed, then bent to help him lift the swan. He was strangely light.

"Who did you bring?" Reid asked her through numb lips, too shaken to turn and look. He couldn't face them, not if they watched them with expressions devoid of hope. It would drag him away from the lifeline he was tenuously reaching for.

"No one who didn't demand to come," she replied. "They chose to come on their own. You took the car so I needed to borrow someone's, Garcia practically cemented herself to me, and I couldn't leave Henry there alone. You're lucky Anderson agreed to stay behind and run damage control."

"Jessica would have looked after him, or his grandparents," Reid said, and Emily's eyebrows shot up. Reid bit his lip. The desire to turn his head burned. He ignored it and stepped into the water, Emily by his side.

"Do you really think Jessica was going to let Jack's dead Dad run out of that room without a chase? She's Haley's sister – I'm shocked she didn't beat us both here."

The water was up to their waists now, and Reid could almost believe they were the only ones left in the world. Rossi followed them, slightly behind, pausing before the water reached his hips. Reid glanced at him, and when the man nodded, lowered the swan gently into the water.

"This is insane," Emily muttered under her breath, her teeth chattering. Her lips were blue in the low light, skin almost as white as the swan. Reid imagined he didn't look much better.

Silence. Nothing. No light, no magic. Just waiting.

They stood in the lake as it flowed around them, and still he was dead.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

She could see the darkness in Reid's eyes growing by the second. The gun felt hot in its holster, looped over her shoulder to keep it dry, but she didn't regret it. She took the shot so Reid wouldn't have the chance to feed the demons that he'd been cultivating.

But by the looks of it, she'd been too late, anyway.

No. Not too late. Her mind ticked. Half remembered words. Reid, no doubt, could remember them perfectly, but she had the gist of them in her mind.

"It's not working," Reid said finally, shaking helplessly. His hands slipped on the swan, and she slid her palm under his head to stop the bill from dipping below the surface. "There's nothing left to save him, it died with Stephen." She didn't know if she was imagining the blame in those words.

A frantic splashing and she jolted, turned, and found herself looking down into Jack Hotchner's furious eyes.

"It has to work," he said stubbornly, his mouth set in a fierce line that was so much like his father's she was forced to believe it. Behind him, Jessica waded uncertainly into the water. "He was alive, I saw him. Henry said that he was coming back."

Henry. Dragging his mom by her hand and almost tripping into the shallows, chasing his friend. Their team clustered on the bank behind them, not following, but waiting. Rossi caught Jack before he could push past, almost lifting him out of the water in an effort to tug him back.

"No," Reid said, jerking. He let go of the bird for a moment, reached for Jack. "Let him go. Jack, come here."

"It's deep," Emily pointed out, judging the water level. "Reid, if he slips…"

Rossi solved it, wading over with his hands wrapped around Jack's chest, holding him up. Reid took his arm. "It's okay, I've got you," he said quietly to the shaking boy. Rossi let him go, trusting him entirely to Reid's hold. "Put your hands where mine are, like that… I've got you."

She held her breath as Jack's smaller hands replaced Reid's. Met Reid's eyes. For the first time, the darkness was gone.

He looked hopeful.

"Come on, Dad," breathed Jack.

The moon glimmered on the lake.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

The darkness cleared. Hotch tried to take a breath. It was like inhaling water, but without choking him, like drowning without the need to breathe. He knew the feeling.

 _"Dad."_

Jack. His son. Calling him.

 _"Come on. You can't. You were alive, don't die again. Please?"_

In all his life, Jack had never asked him for anything as intently as he was asking him for this.

Aaron wasn't in the habit of denying his son.

He struggled against the dark, and took another breath.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

The light was so slight at first Reid couldn't be sure it wasn't just the reflection of the moon off of Aaron's feathers. Then it grew, and he was sure. He could feel Jack's heaving breaths in his hands as the light trailed up their arms, somehow brighter and cleaner than it had ever been previously.

"Spencer…" Jack whimpered uncertainly. Emily caught his hand before he could pull it away.

"It's working," she whispered.

It was.

It did.

Under their hands, the chest moved. The swan blinked. Dark eyes met Reid's.

The light grew.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Breathing burned. But it was good, a good burn, and so fucking welcome that Hotch took two more just to be sure.

There was a single lingering moment when he opened his eyes and Reid was looking down at him, hazel eyes wide with wonder and his mouth slightly parted as though midway through saying his name.

Then the light blurred him away and Hotch felt the change steeling down his spine, hot points of contact from hands on his skin.

It didn't hurt.

The change came and he found himself human in the waters of the lake for the final time, and there was no pain.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Hotch lived again and Reid began counting.

He was going to treasure every moment this time, because he'd learnt for certain that forever wasn't a promise.

"Jack," Aaron gasped, standing in the water with it trickling in rivulets down his body, his clothes clinging to his form, and his son leapt into his arms with a sob that was almost a howl. "I'm here, buddy. I'm alive. I'm alive and here, and I'm am so goddamn sorry."

Someone pushed past as Reid backed away, blonde hair wild, and Jessica almost drove Hotch back into the water as she flung her arms around them both, a family again. Reid turned his head and this time he did take notice of everyone, JJ and Will, Henry and his grandparents, Garcia and Morgan and Rossi. Emily. His family, every last one of them. All alive. Almost. Except one. Gideon's absence was sobering.

The still form of Stephen, alone. Gone.

There was a pang at that. A life wasted. So much potential. Reid had hungered for his death, but now it had come all he felt was sad.

He limped out of the water on a leg that stung, dragged against the rocks at some point during the madness of the last two hours, and observed. A bystander as everyone celebrated Aaron's revival.

He tested the words in his mouth.

 _Aaron's alive._ Nothing. Numbness. Cold.

 _We're all alive._ He shivered. From the cold and the wet. It wasn't true anyway. Gideon had died here.

 _He's coming home._ Still nothing.

He felt clean. Hollowed out, but in a good way. As though starting afresh.

But still empty.

JJ turned her head, as though to look for him, Aaron still holding Jack. Crying. Reid didn't blame him.

He stepped back into the gloom of the undergrowth before they could see him, and turned and walked away.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Hotch finally disentangled himself from his son and turned to Emily, his eyes red-rimmed and mouth smiling helplessly. It wasn't the eerie grin that the mage wearing his skin had given her. It was real and relieved and so thankful for life and family and living.

"Gideon was right the first time," she said quietly, tucking her hands between her arms and her sides, shivering. "It was familial love all along. The son and his father. We could have solved it from the beginning."

Hotch hissed out a breath at the mention of Gideon, his death haunting them. "He died to protect his family," Hotch answered eventually. "If the spell was fair, it should have broken then. Reid…"

He stopped and looked around and Emily's heart twisted. "He's not here, Hotch. He left."

"Why?" The word was pained, confused. Hurt.

"I don't know."

"Where?"

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

They found him in the building where the whole thing should have ended without the pain and the blood and the hurt. Hotch stared at him, standing surrounded by glass glittering in the moonlight shining through the broken window. His. His everything. He knew in that moment that he loved him, more than he had ever imagined he could love someone who wasn't his son.

Emily stopped, took Jack's hand, and waved him forward.

"You didn't drive, did you?" His voice was calm. Oddly composed, considering everything that had happened tonight. "Technically, you've been dead a year. I don't think your license is valid anymore."

"Spencer…"

"Speaking of, I'm really not entirely sure how we're going to spin this so we don't all come out looking like crazy people. Plus, Gideon…" he trailed off and Hotch heard the catch in his voice, pain. It was almost a relief. He'd been worried that he'd sunk back into the semi-shocked state he'd been in the night he saw Hotch turn from a swan to a man.

"Why did you run?"

Reid turned, and tilted his head. Hotch could see blood on his forehead. He'd been hurt at some point between Hotch flying through that window, and him waking up in the water under Jack's hands. "I didn't want to intrude. Your family, you'd just come back from the dead, Aaron. I think they take precedence."

"You are family."

Reid blinked. "I'm not going to hold you to that, you know. I'm pretty sure at the least, there are consent issues behind vowing undying love to a man under a curse; at the very least, it poses an interesting ethical dilemma."

Hotch clicked. _Idiot_. "I meant it," he snapped. Whether or not you did, I meant everything that was said. I loved you then, I still love you, and I stand by that. Even if you are ridiculously insecure."

His eyes narrowed. "You have control issues. We'd be an appalling couple."

"I'm a terrible husband. I'll work too much, I'll neglect you, and we'll fight over it."

"I won't be able to express my emotions adequately and you'll feel unfulfilled."

Hotch saw something darker on the floor and stooped to pick it up, brushing the glass off. It bought him closer to Reid. They were both breathing heavily, as though they'd run a race. "I'm willing to try anyway."

Spencer closed his eyes and a multitude of emotions crossed his face, as though he'd been hit by them all at once. Shock. Grief. Acceptance. Happiness. Fear. "So am I."

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

Hotch handed him the empty box that had contained the ring. "Ask again?"

It wasn't exactly the kind of proposal dreams were made of. He couldn't kneel, surrounded by shards of broken glass and chairs overturned in the panic. They were both filthy, bloodied, and Aaron was technically still deceased, according to the state of Virginia.

But under the same moon that had separated them and watched by Emily Prentiss, Jessica Brooks and the still shell-shocked Jack, he asked anyway.

Aaron said yes.

And their time began once more.


End file.
